The civil protest on GR continues (see Carpet Bombers). Apparently Litchick, who recently changed her , is saying in a that she is going to keep writing author-bashing reviews:
We’re wondering how long this protest will continue before the trolls are all deleted from the site. Right now we are currently taking bets with the popular vote being two weeks. Feel free to add in your vote in the comment section below.
Below is a post we published on July 29, 2012. It describes what we call bully entitlement, that is, what the bullies believe they are entitled to as “reviewers”. And trust us, we use that term very loosely when we refer to the bullies, who we consider not to be BOOK reviewers at all, but author reviewers from hell.
As you read, you will also see why we chose to name our site The Blog That Shall Not Be Named :).
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I have to say that I am extremely impressed with the intelligence of the commenters who visit our site. Not only do they provide keen insight into the recent events going down on GR, they give us ideas for new posts. This one is about bully entitlement.
But before I go further, I want to share this information we received from a site visitor who commented on our post, Jane Litte of Dear Author. The visitor asked us if we remembered romfail. We asked what that was and the commenter said:
Old news. This was a couple years ago, but this got her kicked out of RWA. Jane would tweet every Friday night, Romfail. She would pick books she considered “fails” (romfail). She would choose a book every Friday and take out snippets and make fun of it. The usual crowd would cackle along with her and even a few authors joined in. The thing is, she never seemed to see this as mean-spirited. It was terribly hurtful for some of the authors of the book on the chopping block. There is quite a bit of info on this if you Google it. She’s a piece of work. Very cold.
So, she got kicked out of Romance Writers of America, huh? Wow, that explains A LOT! Thank you, Anon Too, for the information! And please, STGRB readers, feel free to share any and all information you have with us. The more we have, the more we can write about!
Now, moving on … this post, Bully Entitlement, originates from the comments we received on Ridley Gets Schooled, where . We received several links to book blogger sites that have responded poorly to GR’s new reviewer guidelines that Patrick Brown talks about here. They seem to think they are entitled to say whatever they want about authors or even about publishing companies in their reviews. To all authors, publishing companies, and publicists who are looking for book bloggers, we’d like to say:
Be careful who you give your ARCs to.
The majority of those in the book blogging community and in the Goodreads community are wonderful, professional people who will give you honest reviews. Unfortunately, there are a few bad apples that believe they are entitled to say whatever they like about an author or even about a publishing company in their book reviews. Tearing down a book they don’t like is one thing, but tearing down the author or the publishing company is another. It is not appropriate for a book review and apparently Goodreads agrees with us on that. So, we have decided to create a list called “Blogs To Avoid” in the righthand sidebar of our site. Feel free to peruse it or even add to it if you like by sending us a message.
The first blog we heard about was from a visitor who left this comment:
Readers behaving badly are upset that a review about a book should be–wait for it–about the book. Already they’re whining that limits will be put on their ‘right’ to attack and harass authors.
The comments on this blog post are revealing.
Here are a few screenshots of the post itself:
I love how she says that having to review the book and not the author “gets her goat.” *snort* That must be one sick and twisted goat!
Now, if you read down the comments , you will see that our visitor was right. The comments are VERY revealing
You mean, a book review has to be about the … the … the book?! Well, I never! How dare they! That’s just … that’s just … infuriating!
And of course it’s our fault:
The bullies claim that they’re not reading our site, that they’re boycotting it. Yeah right! Bull Shiitake Mushrooms:
So now, we are the site “that shall not be named.” How flattering! They’re comparing us to Voldemort! Muahahahaha! *wrings hands*
Here’s more. They are upset now that GR is finally policing their site and so they are heading out:
Ann Somerville says much the same thing:
Let’s stop here for a second and think about this. The bullies’ reviews are not getting deleted, just hidden, so why are they so upset? One of our site visitors asks this same question in his analysis of GR’s response to our site (comment on Ridley Gets Schooled):
Two-year-old Ridley looks a lot older in her pics.
I like Patrick the Community Manager’s compromise. Allowing trash talk about authors but limiting its visibility to friends and followers fixes a lot of problems on GR’s end:
1. Only a few dozen to possibly a few thousand people can now view the potentially career destroying lies and abuse that these people spew.
2. YOU guys can’t view the lies and abuse that these people spew, which lessens your ammo against GR.
3. Authors and agents can’t view the lies and abuse that these people spew, which stops them from commenting and handing these liars and abusers more ammo.
4. Casual GR members who are now aware of the problem on GR because of sites like STGRB can be assured that something is being done about the lies and abuse that some members continually spew.
5. Users no longer have to sift through petty, irrelevant shit to find reviews about books.
6. The people who WANT to read petty, irrelevant shit can still do that, by being friends with people who write petty, irrelevant shit.
I really don’t see why anyone would have a problem with this new idea. But, then, I’m not two.
This visitor doesn’t understand why the bullies would have a problem with this, but we do. Now, remember good ol’ Lucy and her review that got buried? She was upset for the same reason these bullies are. Because once you hide their reviews, you take away their power – their power to torment, their power to tear someone down if they get in their way, and the power to destroy their career. It has nothing to do with “writing honest reviews” and sharing them with their friends as they claim. This whole thing is about having power over others.
In Lucy’s post, Athena said:
So, are you starting to see this unhealthy obsession with being above everyone else? One commenter on our blog said that the bullies’ behaviour stems from the need to feel important and gain power over others.
And remember what Stitch said in his Bully Culture post:
Another aspect of the GR bully culture that I have noticed is that reviewers exercise self-promotion and in doing so, snark has become a status game where reviewers attempt to score points. Whoever can write the nastiest, most disrespectful review becomes the winner. Whoever can get the most ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ on their reviews is the winner. It becomes a status game of getting to the top and staying at the top. It doesn’t seem to work with 5-star reviews. It only works with the scathing one-stars.
If you hide their reviews, they can’t play this status game (i.e. power game) anymore. The game disappears entirely and their whole culture goes along with it. Under these new GR guidelines, their bully culture cannot exist. So what do they do? They throw a temper tantrum, pack their bags, and head out to another venue that will allow them to stalk, harass, humiliate, and otherwise abuse other people at their pleasure. Sick, isn’t it?
And if you don’t believe this, you might want to read this last screenshot, because it really says it all:
So to recap: the bullies get spanked, they throw a temper tantrum, pack their bags, and leave.
Our advice to Goodreads: LET THEM GO. You don’t want these people littering your site. They make you look BAD.
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