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Comment by andersa | Hacker News Reader

You've not met a real hater if you think this, and should consider yourself very lucky. That was just a frustrated user.

A real hater will obsessively use your product, yet simultaneously attempt to find any reason whatsoever to hate your product (or you), no matter how small, and be extremely vocal about it, to the point of founding new communities centered on complaining about you. Should you address the issue, they will silently drop that one from their regularly posted complaints and find or invent a new one. Any communication you send to them will be purposefully misinterpreted and combined with half truths and turned against you.

Some of these people probably have genuine mental illnesses that makes them act like this.

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Just to be clear, this particular user didn't ever become a fountain of sweetness and light - they were pretty touchy and cranky at the best of times, if I remember right (it's been over a decade), but accepting them as they were let them become a contributor instead of toxic.

Honestly I have thick enough skin that I'm happy to let them be themselves as long as we can reach a basis of professionalism and get a positive result.

You're right that there are many people you can't reach, and trying is a waste of effort, but I think an appreciation for human dignity requires me to at least make the attempt, and sometimes you're rewarded.

Yeah, which is why I think it's important to draw a line between a frustrated user (has genuine issues with his use of the product, can be turned by fixing them), a casual troll (reposts some bad feedback because he thinks it's funny) and a hater (malicious, bad faith, communication not recommended)

With my old saas app (now sold, and then the new owner killed it) I used to love getting angry emails. Almost every time the user ended up turning into an advocate and product champion. I don't know if they were "haters" per-se but they were almost always suprised to get an email back from a real person who cared about their concerns, and over time they changed their opinion. That may just be an artifact of early saas in 2010. Not sure if the same thing can happen these days.

I've seen pathological users like the sibling is commenting about. I don't want to out any community in particular but some of subreddits surrounding open source games can get pretty yikes.

Not saying you're wrong to find silver linings, just wanted to corrobate that sometimes that is insufficient (as far as I can tell, given impassioned haterness germinating for years).

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