“The more silent people are probably the ones that I need to care more about.”
MGK, formerly known as Machine Gun Kelly, had a few words of advice for the students of Harvard Business School earlier this week.
The musician, who has dipped his toes into everything from rap to pop to punk, hit the hallowed halls of Harvard University in Boston’s Allston neighborhood to serve as a guest speaker at the Business School’s Entertainment and Media Club, where he spoke candidly about how he deals with his haters.
“Harvard has a new professor,” the musician captioned a photo of himself standing outside of the university, dressed in a leather bomber coat, red tie, gray pants, and a Lost Americana hat, the name of his latest album.
MGK stood in front of a classroom of 95 seats, which was overflowing with 20 or so more standing students, and answered questions from the group. One of those questions was how public figures and aspiring business leaders can navigate constant criticism, especially on social media.
“He answered it in two different ways. He first was just, like, ‘I just don’t care,’” said Peter Kiesel, a first-year student at Harvard Business School who heard about the event last minute. “And then he said, ‘ I just had to employ the mentality that I simply can’t care about this if I want to be in this industry. I’m doing this because I love what I do, and I love the artistic part of my job.’ And then the second piece he said that I think was a little bit easier to take something from, was that you’re always going to have the loud minority and the silent majority. What he kind of meant by that was how many times do you go online to your favorite artist and write on their Instagram ‘Oh my gosh, you’re my favorite artist. This is an awesome post.’ Hardly ever. Because the people who are gonna comment are the ones who are gonna have something negative to say. So he was saying, ‘That’s kind of something that I have to continue to remind myself of. There are these people who are going about their way to kind of be negative, and those are just like, not the people that I really need to care about. The more silent people are probably the ones that I need to care more about.’”
Another portion of MGK’s speech was related to the elements of air, fire, water, and earth. He spoke about how each element is important to balance the other out. While it sounded a bit unusual, Kiesel said he was “able to pull it all together.”
The musician also took the time to have a small discussion with the leaders of the Entertainment and Media Club before his class.