In our post Tale of Two Sock Puppeteers, one of our blog readers showed you an example of an author who made a mistake and another (Gavin H., friend of well known GR bullies and GR bully exiles who now hang out on Booklikes) who condemned him for it even though — wait for it — he, himself, was guilty of the same shenanigans. In our post, Public Service Announcement, the same blog reader wrote a tongue-in-cheek article about how Gavin claimed that the 22+ Goodreads accounts that gave his book five star ratings were actually Goodreads bots:
The problem is, there’s no such thing as Goodreads bots that go around five-starring indie authors’ books. Either Gavin made the accounts himself or he bought them.
*shakes head* Nice try, Gavin.
But wait! This gets better. The other day, Just the Facts left a comment on our blog saying:
Before it’s too late… go to Twittercounter.com, type in and check out his graph for the past three months.
On December 27th, he had 13,685 followers…
the next day December 28th…
wait for it…
he had 120,698 followers. LOL
Grab it now with a screenshot while you can. Twitter Audit is a good tool as well. All public information.
I hesitated about posting this because personally I don’t care if someone games Twitter or Goodreads or Amazon or whatever. Big Deal. On the other hand, I do care about bullying and this site has done such an excellent job of exposing the fact that many of the worst offenders are in fact just frustrated or jealous authors who are sometimes guilty of the practices that they deride. It’s really a shame that this is necessary, but keep up the good work, STGRB.
Of course, Gavin must have seen it because the next day Whatever left this comment:
It said no results found, so he must have already erased it.
He did a whole blog post on how the reason he has so many followers is because he does a lot of work for charity. Hmm, yeah.
And indeed, Whatever is correct. He did write claiming that exact thing:
Aw, what a good guy, huh?
Fortunately, another blog reader sent us this screenshot that shows Gavin’s Twitter following shooting up by over 100,000 in just one day:
Wow! He must be doing A LOT of charity work. That’s amazing! And all in one day!
So this just goes to show you that Just the Facts was spot on when s/he said:
The worst offenders are in fact just frustrated or jealous authors who are sometimes guilty of the practices that they deride.
You’re right, JTF. It’s sad, but it’s true.
