Well, well, well. The bullies have been very busy this week. Very busy, indeed. According to our eyes and ears, there have been four, I repeat, FOUR bully attacks this week. So, instead of doing four different posts on the four different attacks, we decided just to roll all of them into one. Much easier.
The first one we heard of was from a site visitor who pointed us in the direction of an attack on – wait for it – a 70-year old author who has a serious heart condition. Yes, you heard that right. The bullies went after an elderly woman who is so sick she can’t even be on her computer. After Athena emailed her to let her know that we were there to help, she sent this in response:
The woman’s husband then contacted Athena to let her know that he had never seen anything like the bullies’ behavior before and was at a loss for words. Now, you have to understand that this is an elderly couple who have been involved in research and literature their entire lives, which means going back in time about 50 years. Back then, there was an expectation of civility when responding or rebutting criticism of one’s research. Back then, there was no internet age, no anonymity, and certainly no internet trolls who bullied and attacked whoever was unfortunate enough to get into their path. When Athena received his lengthy email explaining their experience in detail, she responded with this:
These people really don’t discriminate when attacking others. We’ve known them to go after handicapped people, minors (14 and under) and people like your wife, who are elderly with a heart condition. It’s despicable. This kind of reviewer bully culture is something that is new to the book community and we can all thank Goodreads for starting it. It really is something born of the internet.
Thank you for offering to help out. What we do is report what the bullies do to either Amazon or Goodreads. Goodreads hasn’t been known to respond well, but Amazon has. We also report on our blog what the bullies are doing so that readers will know what to watch out for. This levels the playing field and counteracts the damage these people do to others.
The emotional support from our blog and our team helps as well. Before, victims believed that they were alone when they were attacked, but now they come to our blog and see that this happens to people all the time and it’s not the victim that’s the problem. It’s the bullies.
I hope your wife is well. Good luck with everything!
Athena
So the fact is that these jerks don’t just stop at cursing out underage minors (i.e. Archer and Blythe in Bully Reviews), they go after the elderly, too. Anyone who calls his or herself an author is fair game to them no matter how young or old, no matter what state of health. Disgusting, ay?
But wait! There’s more. This week we heard of another author who was attacked simply because she requested to have excerpts from her book taken out of a review. Although book excerpts are protected under DMCA fair use, the author still had a right to make this request and all the reviewer had to do was say no. But did she leave it at that? Yeah, right. And the leader of the attack was…
*drumroll*
You’ll all know Serena from our BBG page. Here is a snapshot of :
You see how she says:
“It was free and I’ve heard bad things. I’m so excited!”
Translation:
“It was free and I’ve heard bad things. So I’m excited because this means that I get to read a book I know I’ll hate just so I can bash the hell out it and the author. This is going to be so much fun!”
Hmm… *scratches chin*
This reminds me of something.
Now, do you all remember Kat’s “facts” that we listed in our post The World Is What You Make It? The “facts” she claimed were true when she told all “butthurt authors” everywhere to just “deal with it”? If not, we’ll show you:
So, now you can all see what utter bullshit her “facts” are. As we said before: “Why is it easy to believe that these people are bored haters who like to hate on authors and books for fun? The answer is simple. Because it’s true.”
Nuff said.
Now, hold onto your hats, STGRB readers, because there’s still more yet to come. We’ve saved the best for last. It has been reported to us (by more than one source) that Angela has been parading around under a sock puppet named ETA:soon:
I take it you’ve all seen this:
Angela, aka ETA:soon, and her brute squad are at it again.
The attack on this particular author was led by ETA and Coaxial. What was the author’s crime? She left a comment to inform ETA that her book had been edited. Here is a shot from ETA’s review:
And what did they do to the author’s books? Well, here are few shots of the shelves they left:
And all this author did was leave a comment. That’s it. This is why we tell people to stay far away from these psychos. And speaking of psycho, we want to show you this comment that ETA left just to show you how unhinged she is:
This does sound A LOT like Angela. (A little ironic that she’s accusing someone else of sock puppetry.) Not only did she lead an attack on this author, she reported one of the author’s books to Amazon on some trumped up charge and got the author’s book removed! She also stalked the author’s Facebook page and found other authors who had commented there. She then led an attack on them as well.
A little cray-cray, wouldn’t you say?
As for Coaxial, well, if you want to see the state of Coaxial’s mental health, just take a look at the pile of gifs on . However, if you don’t feel like losing any brain cells by clicking to her review, then we’ll show you these shots we took:
Anger management, anyone?
