Oh boy. This. I found this on my Facebook feed as well and was not very pleased when I read it. I did react negatively to it but our author was very clever with the last paragraph and tied in criticism of the article with being unfaithful to the self. So I found this very circular--if you disagree with this article, you are just fulfilling one of the harsh truths I mentioned, thus proving that the harsh truths exist. And I'm not even going to begin to try to get into the "They don't like you because you're a creator" comment; that's overly simplistic.

But instead of whining about the last paragraph, I will acknowledge my chief point of disagreement with the article. Despite its title, it really should be called "How to make yourself marketable." Wong starts with the premise that your quality as a person is only a function of your quality to other people which I do not find true at all. While one's social atmosphere will undoubtedly inform how one feels as a person, the idea that self value is derived exclusively from the ability to have a skill that other people enjoy is arguable at best. For example, I write prose on occasion. I know that it's not very good and I've never actually shown anybody what I've written, but it means something to me and it contributes to how I feel as a person. Am I more marketable as a result? Certainly not. But that does not mean that my self-value is somehow diminished.

In fact, I would argue that how one feels as a person is more accurately a function of what one does that is not marketable. In other words, the greatest amount of self-value is derived from that which is anonymous and not driven by foreseeable profit. To apply these thoughts to the issue of love, I find that love is not a product of one's ability to market himself or herself as a person with unique qualities A, B, and C, but more of a jigsaw puzzle idea. Love is more accurately found not as a result of public advertisement but placing oneself in the proper community at the start. In this instance, the metaphorical "dirt" of Wong's argument truly is what matters.

Well, that's my two cents and a little more. Thoughts?