Category: GR Bully Culture


Jane Litte Reveals Her True Colors… As An Author!

Filed Under: Bully Hypocrisy, Bully Lies, GR Bully, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 55 Comments
March 24, 2015

Well, well, well.  Wouldn’t you just know it.  The Godmother of the bullies, well-known for being much too free with her tongue and libeling authors and publishers alike on her blog, in fact libeling them to the point of pushing them into lawsuits against her, Jane Litte, or in real life known as Jennifer Gerrish-Lampe:

Jennifer

has yet another pen name, as she reveals in her latest DA post, A Letter to the DA Readership:

Jane1

Jane2

We know that many of you, as you read the words above, will hear, “Bullshit, bullshit,” going through your mind and you are exactly right to think it.  Jane’s explanation is in a word, hogwash.  First, the reason she is revealing this information is because Jaid Black, whom Jane doxxed on her blog:

Dox

was going to go public with this information anyway, so Jane had to have the first jump and give everyone a bullshit explanation for her despicable actions.  Second, Jane wrote under a pen name for one obvious reason, because she feared retaliation from enemies: enemies she’s made from libeling people and enemies she made during #RomFail (See Why Jane Little Was Banned From RWA, in fact, just read our whole collection on Jane here.  You can read about how she defended violent readers and then attacked Nathan Bransford on Twitter and a lot more!)  Finally, Jane has been using her blog to deceitfully promote her own work WITHOUT telling readers that she was the author or one of the authors.  Notice where she says:

I wanted any success I had with the fiction to be built on the merits of the work, not on the blogging platform. I had a couple of awkward moments where I had to keep one of my books from being reviewed on Dear Author, but somehow I managed to keep them completely separate.

This is a blatant lie and it’s easily provable.  For example, here, on a blog post written by her, she promotes her book, Unspoken:

Unspoken

And here, her blog is promoting her book, Last Hit:

LastHit

And again, here, her blog is promoting another one of her books, The Charlotte Chronicles:

CharlotteChronicles

We’d say we’re surprised, but for someone like Jane, we’re really not.  She’s vicious and capable of resorting to anything to put forward her own interests.

Okay, so, for all the bullies out there who are celebrating Jane’s big reveal, you are probably unaware of the implications of it.  Please, read on.  We’ll enlighten you.  In fact, one of our blog readers will enlighten you.  In recent emails, this blog reader said:

I find this shocking and not surprising.  I wonder how many of the Amazon Bullies are in fact authors… who basically use their bully persona to pile on other authors. There we have malicious gossips essentially hiding the fact that they are authors as they pile on other authors from behind their pseudonyms, pretending to be “readers” protecting “readers” from authors. Can you imagine if a major author took a job reviewing books and lecturing authors for the New York Times under a pseudonym? And suddenly you discovered that Columnist X who reviewed books all the time snidely and nastily was in fact a major author hiding behind that pseudonym? When professional book reviewers write books, the books are non fiction generally and are under their real names, the names they use as “critics.” But imagine discovering that a major author was behind constant criticism of authors… The point is…. this is major. A major bully entity who is in fact an author! And the question is how many others are authors? I think STGRB has already outed some on Goodreads. But I hope the significance is played up. These bullies have, in my estimation, put themselves forward as “readers” and “non professionals” and bragged that “authors are paid but we’re not!” as they justify their malice and pettiness and dirty tricks and constant high toned attacks. And now we find out they are actually authors selling a competing product!!!! Authors pretending to be high toned amateur critics trying to protect the public from authors’ bad behavior. How bad can some one’s behavior get? It makes the entire bully bible a lie —- the entire “argument” that this is a war of readers against authors. It calls into question everything. It should be enough to discredit the bully culture and the bully cliques forever. So now we see what is really happening: a clique of lying, cheating authors has been behind this war against honest authors all along. Now we see the desperation to maintain pseudonyms on Amazon! They can’t keep peddling their lies without those pseudonyms! I say it’s time to ask outright: which of you is an author!!! Come clean now!! Enough of the lies and the dirty tricks.

AND NOW WE KNOW this is all a lie. They were authors all along, many of them. Willing to malign “authors” as they hide behind pseudonyms. That this woman would continue with her blog, given that she is an author and a successful one and promote her own work… makes her despicable. After all it is “promotion” by authors that so angers this “reader bully” population. And she has done it for her own book!!!! I think the question has to be asked now of everyone of these people: What is your real name and are you an author?

I think these people must be exposed for  what they’ve done:

1) Essentially try to convince the public that they are vigilant readers, generous with their time and love of books, who are trying to save other readers from “badly behaved authors.”

2)Try to convince the public that authors are irresponsible and childish and need to be policed by “readers.”

3) That there is war on between these “readers” and bad authors.

The headline here is “The bullies have been lying for years. They are actually authors punching down from behind pseudonyms against fellow authors! The whole idea of the vigilant reader asserting her rights is a sham!”

So all the foolishness about “big bad authors” who might hurt reviewers is a lie. They’re authors!!!!!! All the foolishness about reviewers needing pseudonyms to protect them from authors is a lie. They’re authors! In ruthlessly policing what they call “badly behaved authors,” accusing them of fake five star reviews and self promotion, they have lied, lied, lied, about the fact that they themselves are authors! And this Jane person has actually discussed her own work! The entire bully credo is a lie!

Thank you for your words.  We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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Fionna Free Man’s Book Pulled from Amazon

Filed Under: Anne Rice, Asshats, GR Bullies, GR Bully, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 13 Comments
March 19, 2015

We’d like to report that Jenny Trout and her band of miscreants were successful in their attempt to get Fionna Free Man’s book (a fictional story about Thomas Jefferson’s Mistress) pulled from Amazon:

For proof, here’s a comment from Jenny’s blog:

Lies

If you go back and read why Jenny started this take-down campaign against this author’s book, you’ll see it was because she was just appalled at the “rape” in it and how “racist” the book was that it demeaned a WoC (woman of color.)

Now, why are we telling you this?  Because Jenny completely got it wrong about both the author and the book.  Not only is the author a WoC and a black rights activist, her book has NO rape in it!  None!

Really, there is so much stupid in this Jenny Trout story, we’re not sure where to begin.  I guess we’ll start with Jenny’s tweets on the subject.  Here, she asks how she was supposed to know the author was a PoC (Person of Color):

HowWasIToKnow

Well, Jenny, if you’d taken the time to do your research on the author and her book, just like our blog reader did, you’d have known.  It isn’t rocket science.

Furthermore, in this tweet, Jenny tells someone that she is known for taking down authors whom she judges to be unworthy (and we all know how good her judgement and efforts to inform herself are):

NotBookPolice

Now, because of all this nonsense, we have idiots like this re-blogging a post that is misinformed and that gets the facts wrong on all levels:

Idiot

First of all, Jenny was wrong about the author and her book because she didn’t do her research.  Secondly, Anne Rice didn’t tell any of her fans to complain to Jenny’s publisher.  All our post, Jenny Trout Sabotages Another Author’s Book, Encourages Fans to Pirate it.

Anne1

Anne2

So, Anne had nothing to do with Jenny’s publisher deciding to dump her.  The problem started when one of the authors on the project was uncomfortable having her story published alongside Jenny’s, which she clearly states on her blog:

Explanation

Now, at the very end of Idiot’s re-blog, it says:

This is a really hostile environment for WoC …

And we’d have to agree with that, but not on the part of the “racist fuckheads”.  It is on the part of Jenny and her band of bullies.  Unwittingly, while trying to exercise her self-granted power of author take-downs and punish a “racist” and her book, she did irreparable damage to a WoC and made herself look like a fool in the process.

Good job, Jenny.

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Bullies Growing Weary

Filed Under: Amazon, BookLikes, BookLIkes Bully, Bully Attacks, Bully Mentality, GR Bullies, GR Bully, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 13 Comments
March 23, 2014

Well, well.  It appears as though the bullies are growing tired of being called out for their behavior.  What is interesting, though, is how they describe their feelings on the issue.  We were just recently tipped off to this post written by Barks & Bites on BookLikes:

Header

In today’s post, we’re not going to talk about why their bullying-fatigue is a good thing.  We all know why it is.  What we are going to talk about is the keen insight into the bully mentality the article provides — the erroneous assumptions the bullies make and the myths that they create with their propaganda.  We’ll start by dissecting the text bit by bit.

 

“I think I have reached my limit. I am tired of the hypocritical thin skinned authors and their hysterics. I am tired of their ridiculous and uninformed kiss ass supporters. I am tired of reading shitty books. I am tired of it all and I don’t see any of this going away any time soon.”

Erroneous assumption #1:  All authors are hypocritical and thin-skinned who write shitty books and who fly into hysterics at the slightest criticism.

Our response:  Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

“New authors and ancient authors alike refuse to accept that their writing is a PRODUCT the moment they charge me for it. It’s not an effing baby.”

Erroneous assumption #2:  All authors view their books as babies and all the bully attacks on these authors are the result of these authors complaining about legitimate book reviews criticizing their babies.

Our response:  This assumption is one that the bullies continue to make and promote over and over  In fact, 99.9% of the attacks that we’ve seen have had nothing to do with reviews (i.e. legit critical reviews).  As one of our blog readers commented here:

All together now, and once more: THIS IS NOT ENTIRELY ABOUT THE REVIEWS. And you seem to be trying to make this all about self-published authors.

Anne Rice is not self-published. I’m sure many of the authors on the Horror Writers Assoc. Facebook page who support this petition are not-self published. But it’s easier to think of things in black-and-white, isn’t it?  i.e. “Self-published authors write shitty books that are unreadable, they can’t take criticism, therefore they are the ones having the tantrums and causing the problems.  The end.”

This type of thinking paints every self-published author with the same brush–which is patently unfair. And It’s so much more complex than that. You did touch on this issue being the fault of both sides, and I commend you for that.

I cringe inside when I see any author going off the rails in a tantrum about anything.  It’s unprofessional and gives us all a bad name. It never helps the situation.  It usually results in their blacklisting, which may or may not be appropriate. Maybe they aren’t mature enough to handle the criticism that comes with publishing and should retire until they grow a spine. I don’t know and won’t speak to that. I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it.  I only know that when my children were small, ignoring the tantrums was the best course of action.

And yes, many self-published books are crap.  I downloaded two yesterday, read a page or two, and deleted them.  But here’s the new reality: You might as well settle in and get comfortable or stop reading altogether.  Self-publishing is not going away.

Just this past week, Kristy [redacted] was bullied off of her own Facebook page before the release of her third book, [redacted]. It wasn’t about a bad review. It appears to be a vendetta about something personal from her past. The book bloggers over there were outraged and passed around graphics and headers that said “I hate bullies. I support K. Bromberg” and somesuch. Ironically, the brouhaha may have gotten her so much attention, she hit the New York Times bestseller’s list (though maybe she would’ve hit it anyway). Go, Kristy!  You deserve it. I support you fully.

Elle [redacted] attempted to have a dialogue about bullying on her own Goodreads blog this month. Again, this wasn’t about a review.  She was swarmed, shouted down, and one-starred as a result. She made some beautiful points ( i believe she said she was a lawyer, and I could tell), but in the end, it didn’t matter. The thread is still there, though closed.  They twisted her words and drove her off HER OWN SPACE. You may or may not have agreed with what she said, but do you at least agree that she has a right to HER OWN OPINION and she has a right to talk about that opinion on her own blog without being bashed for it?  It was a fabulous opportunity for dialogue, but some of these people don’t want dialogue.  They want uniform consent. And they want to fight.

What’s really amusing is that it’s the same hardcore bully names every time.  Every single time.  There are maybe 20? 30? When I see their names next to a one-star rating, I automatically discount it, because I know it’s more than likely a revenge rating. They have zero credibility. They don’t appear to read much.  They wield the one star like a weapon because it’s the only power these pathetic little people have.

And eeally, fellow authors: It’s just a star. One little star. And they may say something mean, but you can always have a primal scream in your closet.  Not everything needs to come to the internetz.  If your book is good, you’ll bounce back.  I promise.

It’s true that the worst of the worst have been thrown off of Goodreads and are now marginalized on a forum in an obscure book catalogue website. But last summer I watched these a-holes go after authors with torches and pitchforks, howling for blood, and it wasn’t always about an author tantrum over a review. Sometimes the authors were  baited to respond.  The thrill of the hunt. I don’t know, maybe it makes them feel relevant or something.  And the delicious irony about all of this is that the bully ringleader is a self-published author.

Then there was poor Lauren [redacted], who simply asked “How can someone one-star a book that isn’t even released yet?” She was hounded off of Goodreads, then CHASED her to her Twitter page, where she had the most vile of things said to her.  To be fair, at that point, Lauren should’ve just shut up. I kept thinking “God Lauren, close your page and go away for a couple of days!” You can’t reason with this mob and you can’t talk to them. She tried to do both, and failed miserably, giving them ammunition to fire back in the process.  In the end, they made it entirely her fault, but I was there from the beginning and saw what happened.  It started with an innocent, perfectly reasonable question, not a review.

The bullies will deny that anyone ever physically threatened an author, but I saw a post for Veronica R.’s last book where the reviewer threatened to throat-punch her if they ever saw her. I don’t know- maybe that isn’t a threat of physical violence in their book. It is in mine. Veronica tried to soothe the animals, but was shouted down. All this over an ending they didn’t like. Same thing with Laurel H..

There are just some psychotic, nasty, ugly little people out there who hide behind the anonymity of the internet, but I don’t think requiring real names on Amazon is going to help very much.  The only thing that’s going to help is when some of these people start getting prosecuted for the things they do–both reviewers AND authors if appropriate– and I think we can see that starting to happen.  I have hope.

 

“And it might even be ugly as hell and not at all ready for public consumption. I’m not here to coddle and promote. I’m not here to worry about an authors debt, their sick family or their tender feelings.”

Erroneous assumption #3:  All authors expect reviewers to coddle them because their lives are so hard.

Our response:  Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

 

“We all have shit to deal with but most of us have to deal with careers that dole out criticism when we do what they perceive as a crappy job and we take it because that’s how the world works.”

Erroneous assumption #4:  Everyone in the world has a crappy job where they are verbally abused by their bosses and just have to take it because that’s life.

Our response:  If you have a job like this, QUIT!  This is not the way the world works and life is WAY too short to deal with crap like this.  Quit this job and find another one.

 

“I want to go back to the days when we could share our thoughts about books with each other any way we damn well pleased. But now that can only happen face to face. Thank the gods for my local reading group.”

Erroneous assumption #5:  The bullies only ever shared their thoughts about books and nothing else.

Our response:  This makes us laugh every time they say it.  How many times did they say this when GR announced their anti-bullying policy stating that the bullies could no longer talk about author behavior?  Also, we have shown more than enough evidence that the bullies were never interested in talking about books.  Their main agenda was to search out, hunt down, and destroy the people they labeled BBA.  It was (and still is for some) their crusade to perpetuate this BBA myth and root out all those who are evil in their eyes.

 

“I just wasted too much time reading the Amazon Authors Who Do Not Want Anonymous Reviews thread and I am still in disbelief over some of the things I read there. I then did something I’ve never been infuriated enough to do. I deleted three five star reviews for books by [redacted] who seems to forget that she’s written under an alias. One of those books, [redacted], only had three reviews which included mine.”

Our response:  This is EXACTLY what we are talking about.  B&B just got done whining about how this is all about book reviews and then punishes an author for signing a petition, which has nothing to do with the author whining about one of her reviews.

 

“This made me sad and angry.  I loved those effing books and recommended them to friends often but those days are done. I can no longer separate the person from the work. I can no longer be a part of this petty bullshit.”

Erroneous assumption #5 & #6:  The bullies at one point could separate the author from the book.  The bullies at one point were never part of petty bullshit.

Our response:  This whole thing started on Amazon and Goodreads BECAUSE the bullies could never separate the author from the book.  They are the ones who started the petty bullshit to begin with.

 

“I can no longer support an author who thinks so little of her readers that she’d expose them to potential danger by forcing them to review using their real name in some misguided attempt to further her career and to keep herself safe from “threats and bullies”.  If you can make  sense out of this line of reasoning please let me know because I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.”

Erroneous assumption #7 & #8:  Reviewers will be in danger if they have to review under their real names.  Removing anonymity won’t keep authors from being bullied.

Our response to #7:  We’ve published posts covering attacks on reviewers, but they were very mild.  We have never seen an attack on a reviewer to the degree and severity of attacks we’ve seen on authors.  Not even close.  One of our blog readers said it better than we ever could:

“Another salient point in this blog was the assumption that authors who want the reviewer to reveal her true name want her to be the victim of harm. The assumption being apparently that authors harm people who review under their real names which of course is totally false — a myth perpetrated by the bullies, that authors are “bad” people who must be policed by anonymous gangs. There were ridiculous assumptions like that throughout the blog and the responses. These people have created the myth of “the badly behaved author” to justify their unwholesome hobby and their absurd and relentless bullying. No one signing the petition has shown disrespect for anonymous reviewers. We all know that thousands of authentic reviews have been posted on Amazon by anonymous customers. This is about the ABUSE of anonymity in recent years by obsessive hobbyists with a low opinion of authors and a need to abuse authors, to bully them.”

Our response to #8:  Then why are the bullies so against it?  There’s a reason they don’t want to review under their real names and it’s not because they fear being in danger.  What they fear is being held accountable for their actions.

 

“They may think they’re winning but if most of us stop sharing our thoughts, our 1 star as well as our five star reviews, who the hell will be left to review besides their family and their sycophants? And none of us are dumb enough to fall for that shit more than once.  Who will get the word out about their books?”

Erroneous assumption #9:  The bullies are the only reviewers in the world and if they stop reviewing, there won’t be anyone else who will be able get the word out about authors’ books.

Our response:  I don’t think we even need to respond to this.  It would be an insult to our readers’ intelligence.

 

“Honestly at this point I don’t even care.”

Our response:  Right.  She cares so little about it that she wrote an entire blog rant on the subject.

 

“I feel really lame for wasting so much energy on this reviewing hobby and might just start focusing my energy on something else. Another hobby that won’t shit all over me.”

Erroneous assumption #10:  The bullies aren’t the problem.  The problem is all these whiny authors who can’t just sit there and take all of the bullies’ personal attacks and abuse.  If the bullies start another hobby, then the problem will go away and they won’t ever experience anything like this again.

Our response:  Again, no need to comment.

 

“I realize some authors are cool, [redacted] you get it and there are many others, but it seems as if every time I open my email another author is spewing their crazy ass shit all over the internet. Right now It all seems like such a complete waste of my time.”

Our response:  Then it’s probably a good idea to pack up and move on.  Once you start experiencing the backlash from your actions in other areas of your life, you will begin to understand that the problem is not the world.  The problem is you.

 

Now, if you have the time (and the patience) to read some of the comments on B&B’s post, the bullies seem to be complaining about the “poison in the water” these days, but what they don’t understand is that they are the ones who put the poison there in the first place.  There are, however, a couple of them like Grim who’ve realized that by letting go of the whole BBA crusade, their lives are much happier (a fact we’ve been trying to get across to them ever since we started our blog):

Grim

But the rest are growing more unhappy and appear to be blaming Anne Rice and Todd’s petition:

AnneRiceBlownUp

For the record, this didn’t start with Anne or Todd.  This whole online bully vs. the world conflict was a time bomb waiting to go off.  In the past few years, much to the dismay of the bullies, it has gotten a lot of media attention and if the bullies keep it up, it will continue to get more.  In fact, just this week, we checked Todd’s petition and it’s still going strong.  It is now up to 7,522 signatures:

7522

This alone makes a very strong statement about how deep-rooted this problem is.  Lets hope Amazon listens and puts an end to it.

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Bully Entitlement

Filed Under: Bully Entitlement, GR Bullies, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 3 Comments
July 6, 2013

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 :).

***********************************************************************************************

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.

Buried by Books

The comments on this blog post are revealing.

Here are a few screenshots of the post itself:

BBBGRStepsIn

Whine1

Whine2

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

Infuriating

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:

OurFault

The bullies claim that they’re not reading our site, that they’re boycotting it.  Yeah right!  Bull Shiitake Mushrooms:

SiteMustNotBeNamed

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:

Policing

GoneFromGR

Ann Somerville says much the same thing:

AnnesResponse

BadlyDone

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:

StopsTheBullying

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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Martha’s Surprise

Filed Under: Abuse, Bully Attacks, Goodreads, GR Bullies, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 23 Comments
July 4, 2013

We decided to post this just to give our readers an example of what happens on Goodreads all the time.  Here’s the story:

An unsuspecting booklover joins Goodreads either because she was invited by a friend to join or because of some advertisement she saw, paid for by GR, telling her how wonderful and great the site is and that if she joins, she will not only have access to honest book reviews, but she will also be able to receive free books via giveaways, participate in groups, and share her reading experiences with others, all in a very “honest and respectful place”.

Take special note of the words honest and respectful.

Then, something like this happens:

Martha

If you care to read Martha’s exchange with the All Hail Grimlock (i.e. ) and her troll buddies, we got the screenshots for you:

Review

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Btw, switched her account again.  This is her fourth account.  Yes, you read that right.  Her FOURTH!  If you remember from GR & Copyright, Part 2, we said:

I’d like to draw your attention for just a moment to .  If you click on her name, you’ll notice that she has a brand new account.  This is her THIRD account.  To read more about Miranda, visit Miranda’s Request when she requested a reviewer remove her 5 star review of a book.  Then, Miranda staged a fake exit from GR in Miranda’s farewell by creating a new, private account.  Now she has deleted both accounts and has created an entirely new one.

Uh… wow!

Okay, so back to Martha and Emma.  We know Emma’s real name, IP, and email address and we know Martha’s as well.  Needless to say, they are not the same person.  But it’s very telling that the bullies automatically jumped to that conclusion.

Immediately after Athena received Martha’s email, she informed her that “Grimlock” was , whose real name is Shoshana B. (a bookseller who trolls cyberspace launching personal attacks on independent authors).  Then, when Athena read that Martha believed GR was an “honest and respectful place”, she also warned her about the abuse and corruption running rampant on the site and how GR management is involved in it.  She pointed her to the following posts:

Why Do Bullies Bully?

Something Rotten at the Core of GR

Something Rotten at the Core of GR, Part 2

Unprofessional, Thy Name Is Goodreads

Goodreads Premium Author Program

Goodreads: A new Venue For Prostitution?

GR’s Hidden Groups

Is Goodreads Really Safe For Kids?

GR Silences Authors, Part 1

GR Silences Authors, Part 2

And really, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  There is much, much more.

(On a side note, we’ve been meaning to re-publish a post that many considered very instructive, which was called Thinking of Joining Goodreads?  It was a post that warned authors and readers of the dangers awaiting the unsuspecting and the unknowing who join the site.  We plan to repub that post this weekend, of course adding new 2013 material to it.)

Anyhow, after Athena warned her, Martha still vowed to “try to reason” with GR management about what she had discovered:

Martha2

We already know how this is going to end and we want to say that we’re sorry, Martha, that you had to experience the muck that makes GR the cesspit that it is.  We’re sorry in advance that GR management will blow you off like they’ve done to so many others in the past.  But now at least you know the truth about the site and will be more knowledgable in the future about how to avoid the trolls and to also warn others.  Please, feel free to spread the word.  The more people know about it, the better off everyone will be.

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Unprofessional, Thy Name Is Goodreads

Filed Under: Abuse, Bullied Author, Bully Attacks, Bully Reviews, Goodreads, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 13 Comments
June 11, 2013

We just recently received this link from Goronwy (and also by email from an anon):

Slightly OT, but does anyone know what happened here?

I don’t know who Emma is.

We don’t know who Emma is, either, but apparently she is an author who started a GR feedback thread called   Her original post and comments are gone now because she deleted her account and left GR, like many authors before her.  But from what we can gather from the comments, Emma defended another author who was being attacked and then had her BOOKS labeled as BBA, whore author, attention whore, etc.  You get the picture, the bullies’ usual MO.  In one of her comments, Emma said:

This isn’t about them liking my book, I could care less. This is about being verbally assaulted. They are calling me a whore, not my book!

Do we agree with her?  Is creating BOOKshelves that verbally assault the author a form of harassment?

Answer: absolutely!  It’s the same as writing it right into the BOOK review, which the trolls did with such fervor before GR published its reviewing policy last year, attempting to put an end to author bashing in reviews.  And it didn’t even put an end to it.  Those reviews are only being hidden and some not even that, even when you flag them.  It appears from what we’ve heard that if you flag them, the person doing the flagging will get their account deleted.  Hmm…

Of course the trolls will argue that they have the right to shelve their books anyway they want.  What they don’t seem to get is that these shelves are supposed to be BOOKshelves.  Key word there: BOOK.  They’re not authorshelves.  But apparently these dumb asses can’t seem to tell the difference.

Edit 9/24/2013: We now have a screenshot of Emma’s hellish crime *sarcasm* that set off the attack below.  It was a comment she made in the GR Feedback forum where she stated she would report abusive reviews:

Emma

If you all want to read the convo from what’s left of Emma’s thread here it is:

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Convo4

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And this is how Kara ended the thread after Emma deleted her account and left:

Kara1

Did you all get that?  The thread was no longer productive, so she closed it.  In other words, the author bashing in this thread was over because the author had left so the thread was no longer productive, i.e., harassing/attacking/humiliating/etc. an author is considered productive on GR.

Now, we want to show you how Kara ended another thread that we featured in our post Kara Shuts Down Harassment Thread.  A little background on this post: author C.J. Anderson was being harassed by a reviewer who decided to behave like an asshole.  When C.J. couldn’t get a hold of the GR mods, she started feedback thread called .  As soon as Kara found out about it, she shut the thread down and said this:

Kara2

You see the difference between what she said on Emma’s thread and this one?  On C.J’s thread, she tried to protect a reviewer who was acting like an ass and on Emma’s thread, she shut it down because the author was no longer there to be harassed, so the thread was no longer productive.

For most of our readers here, this will not be surprising and we’re not surprised either, but quite frankly we still think this attitude toward and treatment of authors is a bunch of bullshit and we will continue to say so.

Therefore, we want to end this post by telling you a little story.  A site visitor we have come to befriend just informed us that he recently finished a book (congratulations, btw!) and was organizing a blog tour through a blog tour company.  He reads our blog religiously and told the blog tour manager about it, warning her about the GR/Amazon trolls, many of whom are blog owners.  The manager’s response was so simple and right on, we were surprised we never mentioned this fact before.  She said:

You don’t need to worry.  We don’t associate with unprofessional blog tour hosts.  Our hosts blog about books, not about the latest gossip, and they certainly don’t bash authors.  If we ever see anything like that in our hosts, we automatically take them off our recipient list and never work with them again.

And there you have it!  The words of a REAL professional.

These trolls will argue that they are not professionals and can therefore do whatever they want and treat authors any way they want, calling them whores or worse… and Goodreads allows it, even encourages it.  As Kara so subconsciously points out, it’s considered productive.  But what Goodreads is forgetting is that it IS a business (which is why Amazon bought it) and this business depends on a product: books.  The people who write those books are authors.  So, basically, Goodreads is shitting all over the very people who make their business possible.

As one of our site visitors so astutely put it:

Unprofessional, Thy Name is Goodreads!

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More Bully Stories

Filed Under: Absolute Write, Amazon Fora Trolls, Bully Attacks, Bully Reviews, Goodreads, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 6 Comments
May 2, 2013

Okay before we begin today, we want to share a couple things with you.  First, this one will crack you up.  It’s a new list the bullies made called  and guess who are among the ABB on this list!  That’s right.  Looney and her good pal Elly Helcl.  You remember Elly, the one who tried to pretend she was her ex-husband to get the password to our GR & Copyright post.  When I saw this list, I about spit out my coffee all over my laptop.

So, if any of you have a few authors you want to add to this list (i.e. authors they hate, muhahaha), by all means, have at it.

Now for some sad news, we just recently found this story, I Quit, on the Passive Voice about an author who quit writing.  If you ever see this happen, either to an author you read or someone you know, please give them all the support they need to keep going.  When it comes to writing, the golden rule always applies: Never give up!

*sigh*  Sadly, we have four new bully stories.  The first one comes from an anonymous author who was targeted for being a very successful self-published author.  That’s the only crime she committed – she was self-pubbed and successful.  Go figure.

SuccessfulAuthorTargeted

Another author we heard about is Sophie Monroe who was targeted by Coaxial and ETA:soon:

SophieMonroe

We don’t know what Sophie did to incur their wrath but it probably wasn’t much knowing the nature of these two trolls.  The link to Coaxial’s (Shoshana Bick) review is  and ETA’s, .

The other targeted author this week was Martin Hopkins:

MartinHopkins

Here is the link to the , here’s , and here’s his .

(Note: we want to say thank to our eyes and ears out there who keep informing us of the victims.  It’s helpful.  This way we can let these people know that it’s not them; it’s the bullies.  It helps victims to know that they are not alone.  That there are others out there who have been targets like them.)

And last but not least, we heard from another person (an author this time) who was just recently banned from Absolute Write.  If you all remember our post on The Banning of Robin Sullivan, we warned people to stay away from Absolute Write.  Well, this person sends the same warning.  Her first message to us was this:

NewBullyStory

When Athena asked her about her story, she sent this:

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She ended the story with her final thoughts:

FinalThoughts

She is right.  Successful writers don’t spend their time engaging in this petty shit.  They spend their time actually writing.  And stay far away from the Absolute Write Water Cooler.  The AW mods are vipers.  They’re the worst of the worst.

So, in conclusion, let this be a lesson in our continuing bully education: beware on GR, on the Amazon Fora, and on Absolute Write.  These are common online hangouts for the bullies.  Please spread the word (quietly) to those who may not know.

Who knows, you may end up saving a life.  :)

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The Bullies Go Mad

Filed Under: Bully Lies, Goodreads, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 13 Comments
May 1, 2013

Wow!  Now I think we’ve seen it all… okay well maybe not, but this is pretty crazy.  This just shows to what lengths these people will go.  We were just tipped off to this  where there is a screenshot of sock-puppets with our names leaving one-stars and derogatory shelving of Dougie Brimson’s book (these socks have since been deleted):

BullySockPuppets

Okay, it’s obvious this isn’t us and Dougie knows that as well, but this just proves that the real sock-puppeteers are the bullies themselves.  Ever wonder why the bullies are so quick to accuse others of sock-puppetry?  It’s the same reason why liars are the first to call other people liars.

Self-projection.

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Why Do Bullies Bully?

Filed Under: Abuse, Amazon Fora Trolls, Bully Attacks, Goodreads, GR Bully, GR Bully Culture, News by Johnny Be Good — 28 Comments
April 20, 2013

Just recently we have been alerted to two very disturbing bullying stories in the news.  One of Rehtaeh Parsons and the other of Audrie Pott.  What do these two girls have in common?  They were raped and then photos of their attack were either circulated around their school and/or posted online.  Because the humiliation was too much, they both committed suicide.

(Side note: if you wish to support independent inquiry into police investigation of Rehtaeh’s attackers, sign this petition.)

These kinds of stories are horrific and lead us to the question: why do bullies bully?

To answer this question, we did a little research and found .  A few paragraphs in this article struck a chord with our experience:

“It provides these kids with a sense of power,” said Catherine Bradshaw, a developmental psychologist who studies bullying at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “It’s a way of pulling your core group closer and putting someone else out of it.”

“The simple reason is it shows that they have power over others,” agreed Marlene Snyder, Development Director for the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in the United States, based in Clemson, S.C. “The reason that they do it repeatedly is that they are getting away with it. Nobody is calling them on their bad behavior. When they aren’t called on it they think, ‘Well, it must be O.K.'”

…

“For the longest time we thought for sure that these ringleader bullies were , that there was no way that you could establish dominance and control by humiliating other kids or tormenting them,” said bullying expert Dorothy Espelage, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “But now we’ve shown that there is a peer socialization process — that bullies tend to have more friends.”

Indeed, experts agree that peer influence is crucial in accounting for . “If your peer group says that pushing and shoving and spitting on people or spreading lies is O.K., even though you may have been taught differently in your home, you lose your moral compass,” Snyder said.

As for our blog, we wonder what makes people do things like this:

IveHeardBadThings

Or this:
WantToReadJustToRip

Or this: cyber stalking, harassing, libeling, hacking into private accounts, personally attacking, threatening (click both here and here), leaving psychotic comments, and contacting their charities.

In each of these cases, Gyruleine’s recent comment makes a world of sense:

It doesn’t surprise me that the bully reviewers are quick to sympathize with a woman who essentially bullied and abused Hugh Howey and to resent his ridiculing her to the public. These people are abusive themselves and most abusive types prefer not to be recognized (by themselves or by others) as abusers. Most abusers actively deny abusing their victims and their enablers are equally quick to deny it or attempt to justify it.

That’s why STGRB has hit the bully reviewer community so hard.

So, bullying gives them a sense of power and since they are encouraged by their peers to continue, they assume it’s okay.

Or…

Could it be in some cases that they are  who are either getting paid to or have a vested interesting in stamping out their competition?

 

 

ShoshanaBickLinkedIn

And who is ?

CoaxialOnAmazon

 

Name look familiar?

*cough cough*

A few examples:

Coaxial’s Threat

Bully Attacks This Week

Apology Not Accepted

Psychotic Comments

And is another:

GoodLaugh

There are many more.

Note: Coaxial Creature is known as All Hail Grimlock on BookLikes.

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Internet Trolling

Filed Under: Amazon Fora Trolls, Bully Hypocrisy, GR Bully Culture by Johnny Be Good — 2 Comments
March 10, 2013

Below is a post we published September 18, 2012, on internet trolling as a mental illness.  We’re re-pubbing it now as several people have asked us why exactly we call her Looney, but also because of this comment left by anon-a-bus:

Just curious about something. Looney has a post up about how to hide your IP. Maybe I’m missing something here, but most normal people don’t even think of those things. If I’m not doing anything wrong then why would I need to hide my IP?

I’m sure some people have valid reasons for hiding their IP. However, when people like Looney do it, and they give out directions to show others how to do it, doesn’t that bring up all kinds of shifty thoughts? Sockpuppetry anyone?

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We’ve been wanting to write up this post on internet trolling for a while now, but events have outpaced us and so we are just now getting to it.  But before we move on, we want to clarify a few things for our readers who have been sending us inquiries.

First, we’ve had several people ask us about Annabeth’s comment in A Dedication to Our Readers:

Now, my review is this one:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12519948-a-nnabeth-hole?sort=review&view=reviews

I do mention the book itself, but I also explain why that nice Mr Losowsky is on all those nasty shelves. I think people can’t help but wonder why such a harmless book is on so many offensive shelves, which they would immediately notice when their eye wanders to the edge of the book page.

They want to know who Mr. Losowsky is and why he was a victim of a bully attack.  First of all, Mr. Losowsky is Andrew Losowsky, the Books Editor of the Huffington Post.  In Annabeth’s review of his book, The Doorbells of Florence, she says:

AnnaOnLosowsky

As a point of order, we will say that Mr. Losowsky didn’t write the article.  We did.  He contacted us on July 11, to solicit an opinion piece from us about our site.  We wrote it and it was published in the books section of the Huffington Post on July 20.  It also received a mention in USA Today beside Stephen Covey’s final written work.

Here is a screenshot of Andrew’s original message to us:

Losowsky

Notice that he calls Goodreads “a venue of some genuine unpleasantness”?  You see, we are not the only ones who think that GR fosters a toxic environment on their site.  So does the Books Editor of the Huffington Post.  That should tell you something.

Secondly, some of our readers have asked us for some clarification on Looney Tunes.  They want to know how we were able to verify that she is Minerva.  Also they want to know why A Poet and Don’t Know It would write Ode to a Loon, calling her a troll who has been “duly banned.”

As for her being Minerva, I explained that in my response to Ally’s question in the comments:

Well, from the beginning we knew it was her because she kept pimping Minerva’s site. She did it on HuffPo and a bunch of other places. We also knew it was her by her voice. Same bitterness, same spite. But we confirmed it by a site visitor who comments on our blog, on Ann’s and on Minerva’s. We know the names this person goes by. You see, she has the same IP, but different names. What’s funny is that Ann just figured this out and the only way she could have done that is if she can see the IPs of the people who visit Minerva’s site. Hence, she is Minerva.

We’re not at all surprised to see her parading around under another name as she has been doing this for years – trolling the internet under various screen names and sockpuppets.  We first learned of her history with sock puppetry when someone sent us .  Here are a few screenshots from the conversation that should shed some light on her past:

ShouldntTalkAboutSockPuppets

ScreenName

WankCommunity

As for the two links that Kaia gives:

Here is the link talking about her trolling as Tritorella.  At the end, the author says, “As for Tritorella being “batshit insane” in every fandom she’s been in? You’d have to take a poll on that. Majority rules.”

And here is the link of the cyberstalker alert providing all her various email addresses.

So, according to Kaia, she has been known for sock puppetry, cyber-stalking, being banned from Dear Author, and also being dropped by her publishers for her behavior.  At first, we were hesitant to believe this considering the source of the information, but since then, we have received so many messages confirming it that we don’t even question it any longer.

For example, here is a screenshot of a message we received from Rather Not who took a “screengrab” from one of Looney’s deleted posts.  It’s not exactly a screengrab per se, but a copy/paste from her blog to a text file.  We could tell it was genuine by the missing apostrophe’s, which are replaced with “’”.  This happens due to the difference in character sets in browsers and other applications.

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It’s really unbelievable all the private messages we’ve received about her.  The reason so many people hate her is due to her relentless harassment of others, her lack of empathy for them, her lack of respect for their feelings, and the pain and humiliation she has caused them.  She has done this to SO many people.

As for us, I will reiterate what Athena said.  We don’t hate her.  We just think she’s ridiculous and pathetic.  Especially in light of , her “Code of honour for authors” to which Dougie Brimson says:

Laughable

When Dougie says it’s laughable, that’s because it is.  And if you think she’s suddenly changed and seen the light, think again.  All you have to do is take a look at her blog.  That should relieve you of any delusions of her turning over a new leaf.  She says wants us all here to “die in a fire.”

DieInAFire

And her latest victim?  Spinner (Sharon L Reddy) who she is currently harassing on her “” thread.  Oh, the irony!

So, why are we giving you all of this information?  Well, first to answer the questions our readers have put to us, but also because we wanted to talk about the topic of internet trolling.  When we talk about internet trolling, how far is too far?  When does it become less of a past time for some and more of a mental illness?  And why does it happen?

In we were referred to by a site visitor, Claire Connelly attempts to answer these questions.  She indicates that some of the extreme actions of internet trolls are a “a sign of mental ill-health.”  She talks about one troll named Ben:

“He said the worst thing he ever did was vandalise the Facebook memorial page of a young girl who had committed suicide. “I wrote, ‘How’s it hanging guys’.”

He doesn’t feel any remorse, and strangely doesn’t consider his actions bullying despite claiming he probably wouldn’t have started trolling if he had not been bullied at school.

“I’d feel responsible but I wouldn’t care. I’ve pretty much lost all hope for humanity anyway, I don’t believe that anything can save people,” he said.

Ben and the hundreds of thousands like him reflect the dark side of the internet. They believe themselves to be cultural critics, indulging in harmless fun, but RIP trolling is one of the most destructive and harmful forms of trolling. It mocks and exploits the pain of those grieving the loss of loved ones. It ranges from the sort of distasteful comment Ben posted to plastering pages with photo-shopped pictures of babies in meat grinders or hardcore pornography.

Last year Bradley Paul Hampson became the first Australian to be jailed for it. He plastered the Facebook tribute pages of two slain schoolchildren with child pornography, an act the judge described as depraved.

In the UK, one of the most infamous RIP trolls, Sean Duffy, was sentenced several months later for persecuting on Facebook four families of dead children. On one girl’s memorial page he wrote: “Help me mummy, It’s hot in Hell.”

But trollers like Ben and Hampson may not be just hurting their victims.

Psychologist Karyn Krawford claims that extreme trolling may be a sign of mental ill-health.

Ms Krawford said she had done studies which showed the empathy of mental health sufferers decreased for every hour they spent online.”

She also says that “psychologists attribute the bad behaviour online to “deindividuation” – the feeling people get when they think they are anonymous.”  This is something that we’ve noticed, too, in witnessing and documenting bully attacks on GR and other related places.

So, when Andrew Losowsky speaks of GR as being “a venue of some genuine unpleasantness,” he’s not kidding.  We might even go farther than that.  We might even say that it is not just a venue of some genuine unpleasantness, but also a venue of some genuine mental illness.

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