Why a reader telling me to f*ck off felt like a good thing

If you’re not for everybody, you’re doing something right

At my local coffeeshop last week, settling into a cortado and inhaling the familiar odour of Barcelona streets – croquettas and pan con tomate mixed with eau de dog pee – I glanced at my phone. Someone in my email list had responded to a message I’d sent earlier in the day reminding people that it was the last chance to join a challenge I was running to help freelancers thrive.

‘John Wellington’ had written back to me to tell me to “f*ck off”. At least his trolling was veritably Raymond Carver-like in its minimalism. He didn’t call me something horrible or mysoginistic, as male trolls often do to women. But confusingly, he also didn’t unsubscribe (don’t worry, I immediately booted him out of my list).

And once the few seconds of my morning bliss being punctured had passed, I did think to myself “well I have to be doing something right!”. Because people don’t tell you to go and do one when you’re being politely bland. When you offer up gentle tips on how to find new story ideas, or 5 ways to grow your substack.

The emails I’d been sending my list were trying to shake things up, urging people to get out of the freelance rut of just focusing on being in the hamster wheel of producing work and actually work on their business – thinking about strategy, and marketing, and being visible online.

The tone of that particular email that got Mr Wellington responded to, was a little along the line of a “hey pal, are you seriously passing on this??” and it was meant to be a “ding, ding, last orders” kind of message to encourage action.

This is my guess: If he just wasn’t interested, he’d have unsubscribed or just ignored it. But to send me that message tells me it triggered him in some way. Maybe he feels like he’s doing bugger-all to grow his freelance career and I reminded him of that. Or maybe he hates a woman being confident in saying “I know what you need to do”. It’s always possible he was just a tool who felt like being rude. But my gut tells me that isn’t it.

And the reason I took his shitty little email as a positive sign is that you cannot be for everyone. You don’t have to set out to be an agent provacateur. But if you never say anything that people disagree with, that make people want to get in the comments section and have a discussion, then you’re never saying anything that’s going to really connect with someone in a way that makes them feel seen. That makes them think “hell yeah! This Priya Joi [insert your own name here for max effect] person really gets me!”.

And that email that riled old Mr Wellington up? It was the same one that had other people writing to me telling ‘I’m a breath of fresh air, and they’re looking forward to more from me’, that they ‘finally get how to get over the exhausting money myths’ that were keeping them small. Now, these are my people. But I would never have found them if I didn’t poke at our preconceived notions about freelancing.

I’ve really been trying to get to the end of this piece without mention of AI, but it has to be said - now more than ever, in a world written by chatGPT, you need a point of view. You need to let your personality out. Let it run wild and weird. (ok maybe not too weird, we’re still in work mode, but you get what I mean).

Because what we think, believe and feel is the only thing separating us from the robots.

And maybe one day they will take over and we will be serving our AI overlords, but until that day I want to be as loud and opinionated - even if people think I’m wrong – as I can be.

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