My Crowdfunding Experience - "haters"

Yesterday I had my first experience with what we nowadays call a "hater".

After two months of having published my Crowdfunding online, after much thought and also fears, it was all going well. The beautiful thing of Crowdfunding is that it consists of a platform where people who care about you or trust in your talent are allowed to help you through a donation or sharing your campaign with their friends. No one is forced to help, it is all voluntary and that is what makes it amazing. Due to this genuine care and love from friends, family or music followers, I am believing it will be possible for me to stay in London and continue pursuing my music dream.

I was truly happy two days ago. I shared my campaign again on Facebook and I received new beautiful messages of care, support and desire of donating. As I was so scared of people’s reaction when I started this fundraising, it is a wonderful thing to receive these gestures of kindness and understanding, and it truly is helping me so much in overcoming any fears.

So what happened yesterday?

In my personal page, a guy that I barely know (that I will here leave anonymous) and that was in my high school years ago, commented the post I shared about my crowdfunding. He wrote “Oh then I need it too! I need it, it’s a matter of taste!” (first image, down). Then, he created a crowdfunding campaign - yes, just to hurt me he even bothered spending time creating a fake crowdfunding website, thanks for the dedication! - to, supposedly, collect donations to help him buy a.… BMW! (second image, down).

*clap clap clap*.

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I had considered that a situation like this could eventually happen and I thought it would be easy to simply ignore it. However, when it finally happened, it did affect me.

I confess I felt very down and insecure. I was scared people would judge me, I feared all sorts of situations of people agreeing with him or commenting similar things - but it never happened. After sharing this with my friends and family, they made me realise some things that are obvious but also easy to forget when in these situations.

It is a reality that some people are bored, intrinsically cruel and therefore spend their time waiting for the perfect moment to feel some little excitement through hurting others, feeling like “rebels”. It is a reality that usually people who do this have nothing to do with their lives, mainly considering this particular case where he compared the fundraising of money for education with money for an expensive car. Not to mention the fact that, even if he had read about my family’s situation which I explained in the campaign (which he probably did not even), the truth is that it probably would not have made him re-consider this sad act of his. He would not care about any pain I might be going through, simply because hurting me is, to him, an entertainment and an attempt of looking very cool and bold in front of his friends - and this is far more important to these people than the well-being and happiness of others.

This said, I wanted to share my story to say that “haters” do not only exist in the lives of celebrities. "Haters" are normal people out there and it is important that we know it. From there, we can then learn to deal with them with what they deserve: by ignoring them with confidence.

I did not remove his comment from my Facebook post precisely so that it is public. So that everyone can see that there are people like this, always waiting for a moment to hurt others.

I do not regret this campaign. I need help, I tried other ways and so far it didn't work. Crowdfunding was suggested to me by many reliable people and so I did it. I do not regret it because I know that it is purely the donations of people who genuinely want to help me and believe in my future. And sadly, most of those “haters” do not really have a future, not even a plan of it.

So do not be scared! If you are a victim of situations like these, it simply means that you were brave to expose yourself to the world and you are probably making an impact - but don't ever let that get in the middle of your way and most of all never go down to their level. Love always!