I have a few trusted advisers in my inner circle who semi-regularly have to talk me off the ledge, because I have a small but vocal cadre of haters with some insane and rabid vendetta who want to prove the following:

I am an infiltrator (of what, I am not sure)

That I have no interest in helping black women, despite three years of blogging proving the contrary.

That I hate black men.

That I hate black women.

That I hate myself.

That I’m really a black man posting as a black woman posing as a black man.

That I am an alien.

That I’m in league with the devil.

That if I really wanted to help black women, I would work out of a hut and near starvation because I have no right to earn a cent for all my efforts.

I mostly ignore this, but sometimes my sensitive nature causes me to go H.A.M. momentarily. But I think after I digest this bit of news, I’ll be all better from now on. You see, a new study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology confirms that no matter what you do, haters are gonna hate.

The DEETS:

In their paper “Attitudes Without Objects,” psychologists Justin Hepler and Dolores Albarracin show that those who already hold a lot of negative views are more likely to react negatively to new stimuli.

After marking the dependably hateful haters with a scarlet H, the researchers presented participants with information about a new product: the “Monahan LPI-800 Compact 2/3-Cubic-Foot 700-Watt Microwave Oven.” This elaborately titled microwave oven does not exist (except in Jack Donaghy’s mind), but participants didn’t know this and were given three glowing fake reviews and three dissatisfied fake reviews. While people who more or less liked taxidermy and crossword puzzles also liked the oven, the haters drenched their fake consumer surveys in haterade. They were also more likely to hate on recycling and vaccine shots. (To be fair, it’s hard to be a ray of sunshine when you’ve got the measles.)

So if seems that no matter what I do, or say, or write or speak or eat or drink my enemies will universally hate it, because that’s just what they do and who they are.

Ahhhh. How liberating.