There are lots of haters out there.

Technology uber-blogger Michael Arrington recently blogged about how he got spat on, and the troubles associated with being successful and famous. While I do consider Arrington to be quite derelict in his journalistic responsibilities (see our song "Fred and Mikey, Give Truth a Chance"), I don't think he -- or anyone, for that matter -- deserves to be spat on or threatened with violence.

It ain't just Arrington who's feelin' the hate, though. Jason Calacanis recently dropped an email bemoaning the "end of empathy" -- and even called for an empathy day on Twitter. Jdawg posits that the end of empathy is a result of the Internet making us all live in public.

I used to hate on Jdawg -- longtime readers may recall the Kid Mercury jam, "Jason Calacanis, Stop Lying About 9/11" -- until he removed false information on 9/11 from his site, and even favorited my song for him, thus causing the video to receive over 1,000 additional views. I'm always friends with anyone who spreads the Truth, so I don't hate on Jdawg anymore.

But I do think being a hater has its purpose. Part of what's going on in the world is that traditional systems of authority are collapsing. The new systems of authority that emerge are from the bottom up; status and authority now go to whoever has the most social influence, i.e. followers on twitter, friends on MySpace....whoever can reach the most people.

Accordingly, it is up to us to ensure the social hierarchy is constructed in a fair way. We are doing this properly to some extent; for instance, most people wouldn't link to a person advocating violence or hate, and thus those people are marginalized in terms of the amount of hate they can spread -- they are lower in terms of social hierarchy. Conversely, though, we as a society proactively avoid linking to the Truth, and if status is not associated with the Truth, how good can the hierarchy we create really be?

The universe always corrects itself, though, and thus any world in which the Lie is rewarded is doomed to fail -- it is only a matter of time. We are seeing this in our current world already, and those who know the Truth understand that this is likely just the beginning. Let us hope that we will find the courage to build a better world in the wake of the collapse of our existing world (see our report on Culture 2.0 for more on this).

In the meantime, here are some rules for dealing with haters:

1. What you put out comes back to you. You spread hate, even if you are hatin' on the Lie, expect hate to come back to you -- and the Internet can make that happen real fast. Instant karma.

2. Stop caring about what other people think. Listen to the little voice in your heart, not the big meaningless voice of the crowd around you.

3. As I've said before, Always Tell Your Friends the Truth. And I'm referring to "friends" in the MySpace sense of the word. All good things stem from the Truth.

I will conclude by reminding you of some very important messages I've previously delivered that can also shed light on how to overcome the haters: Stay True, Love Yourself for Who You Are, and Don't Let the Haters Get You Down.