Category: In The News

Yzabel / October 19, 2014

By now, everybody, their dog and their neighbours must’ve seen the crapstorm on Twitter, Goodreads and other networks, stemming from this article in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/18/am-i-being-catfished-an-author-confronts-her-number-one-online-critic

I wish it were a hoax, or some PR stunt (in which case it’d be one done in very bad taste). Unfortunately, I suspect it’s not the case.

I’ve already expressed my opinion about it in a couple of tweets/comments, but I guess this is one of the issues I should blog about nonetheless, if only because the cries of “bullying” in the past months (the past couple of years?) have been growing to epic proportions, and a lot of people don’t seem to have the slightest idea anymore about what’s happening and/or what’s true and what’s fabricated.

TL;DR: reviewer posted 1-star review of book on GR. Author claims reviewer & friends harrassed her. Author then processed to track reviewer until uncovering her real ID, and showed up at her house.

I don’t know the original blogger. All I’ve been able to see were her Goodreads reading progress of the novel, not the review itself (deleted?). However, the only other side to the story is the author’s, and considering 1) the tone of the article and 2) the lack of clear proof, it’s also rather fishy. I can only recommend reading the whole article first to get a clear idea; the gloating undertones didn’t strike me as witty and humorous.

But one thing is clear for me: stalking is never OK. I don’t care what reviewers wrote, I don’t care how the author felt, I don’t care whether the reviewer’s friends went on the rampage, or whether the author’s friends did. It doesn’t matter. Simply put: fellow authors, you don’t track readers and show up on their doorstep to confront them. Seriously, who in their sane mind would consider THAT alright?

What kind of message does that send?

1. Random schmuck does the same thing, s/he likely gets a restraining order against him/herself. Author does it, she gets an article in the online Guardian and a pat on the back.
2. It’s OK to stalk a reviewer because you didn’t like what s/he wrote about your book.
3. Reviewers should always post with their real names (cf. the asinine Amazon petition endorsed by Anne Rice); if they don’t, it means there’s something shady going on, they have something to hide (hint: their privacy?), they’re only here for the trolling  & bullying. (Authors, though, are totally allowed to use pen names.)

To which I answer:

1. Way to go, author who’s clearly in a position of power (access to media platform, publishing house, family connections). Way to prove that when you have fame and money (also when you’re going out with the son of Frank Rich, one of the most connected journalists in New York), stalking becomes OK. But the readers who leave less than 5-stars reviews are, of course, bullies hurt your feelings, so you’re entitled to follow them home. Not.
2. No, all other authors don’t agree with that. In fact, I’ve seen a bunch who’re clearly disgusted by such behaviour.
3. You don’t answer reviews. Repeat after me: YOU. DON’T. ANSWER. REVIEWS. Reviews are for readers, NOT for authors. Reviewers aren’t (y)our editors nor beta-readers. They’re not here to “help you improve”. They’re the ones at the end of the road, reading the final product. Not liking it is their right. Deal with it, or find another job.
4. You don’t make important decisions, nor discuss delicate matters when you’re drunk. (The author admitted it in her article. Granted, I admit when I’m drunk, too… but then I don’t proceed to stalk people either.)
5. When told not to engage trolls and bullies, DON’T ENGAGE TROLLS AND BULLIES. The first rule in such cases is “don’t feed the trolls”. I learnt that around year 2000 or so, possibly even before that. Surely other people can learn it as well.
6. Catfishing isn’t creating a pseudonym and posting some elements of your real life under that name. Catfishing is deliberately posing as someone else in order to lure the targetted person into a romantic/sexual relationship. Go check your facts, please.
7. So, such things happen, and we should post under our real names? Are you kidding me? (The present situation notwithstanding, people should never reveal too much about themselves on the internet anyway. That’s one basic rule of safety. I also learnt that back in 1997 or something.)
8. Go home, Guardian. You’re clearly drunk. What in Mordor ever possessed your editors to let that piece of garbage make the news? Didn’t anyone notice how wrong the whole thing was?

You might say, “it’s not OK either for reviewers to attack an author through his/her work, to be nasty towards the author just because”. And I totally agree with that! Cyber-bullying is real, even though I think the whole term’s been used more and more in the book-blogging world to cry wolf at any negative review, instead of labelling real bullying. However, this is a point fit for another discussion, not this one, for a very simple reason: it diverts the attention from the real problem, which is the stalking. Discussing the reviewer’s behaviour at this point would be akin to, say, asking a rape victim “don’t you think that you wearing a miniskirt attracted unwanted attention, and so, in a way, you were asking for it?” This is a case of victim-blaming, and it has to stop. The reviewer, in this case, doesn’t have to prove she didn’t attack the author. The author’s making the claims, so she has to prove them. That’s why you have to take screenshots, people. (That’s why I’ve added ‘shots of the Guardian article at the bottom of my post, by the way.) Demanding that the blogger comes up and sue the author is basically implying “if you don’t do it, it means you’re guilty of [trolling, whatever] and the author was right in stalking you”, which in itself is wrong. For what it’s worth, maybe the blogger is now scared. People don’t waltz into the limelight when they’re scared.

At the end of the day, all it takes is one more step on the slippery slope to turn “anxiety at a 1-star, trolling reviewer justifies stalking” into “anxiety at a 1-star reviewer justifies stalking”. What causes “grief” to an author is always highly subjective. I was once told that I wrote “digusting things that no normal human being would ever imagine”; I’m pretty sure that comment would have crushed someone else, while it just made me raise an eyebrow before I switched to another activity. What would the next step be? “If a review makes me feel bad, I’m justified in stalking the reviewer?” What if just any negative review makes me feel bad? Does it justify going on the warpath?

Maybe the reviewer behaved like shite. I don’t know, since the author didn’t provide clear proof (tweets, screenshots, etc.). The Goodreads reading progress on that specific book didn’t strike me as an attack against the author, just as comments about why the reviewer felt infuriated by what she was reading. Still, it doesn’t justify said author tracking information about the reader, calling at work, driving to her home, confronting her. (And finding Blythe’s behaviour strange: well, of course it must’ve been strange. If suddenly someone walked up to me, calling me by my real name to confront me about something I wrote online under a pseudonym, maybe I’d panic and start to deny in a frantic, suspicious way, because I’d realised someone tracked me and found my house, not because I’m a troll. When people feel threatened, there’s no way to say how they’ll react. They don’t always react in a logical, smart way.)

This whole thing is just so stupid, and I still can’t understand why the Guardian ever gave a platform to something like that. (Or, rather, I can, and it’s a shame.)

Screenshots of the article:

Yzabel / September 16, 2005

Yesterday, I caught this article about Angela Merkel’s childless status in the online edition of The Independant. The elections are drawing to a close, since it’s for this week-end, and it looks like once everything is said, people will once again resort to sex slur to strike at their opponents. Even though I don’t agree with many of Merkel’s points, I don’t think she deserves such a low blow—and coming from another woman, nonetheless. (As a sidenote, I’m aware that it’s just another of the usual pre-elections blows, specially coming from the opposition; I just find it extremely low, and of very bad taste.)Then it hit me—seriously, can women in politics ever stand a chance? Will there be a day when such attacks stop? Why is it that women get this kind of arguments shoved at them, while they wield so much less importance in the case of male politicians? Why does this matter of sex always come back, as if it was more important than criticizing their programs instead (which are the things that should be discussed first and foremost, in my opinion)? Sure, every celebrity gets her deal of flak; once your name is known, even the most insignificant of yours action can become matter to discussion and mud-throwing. But this?Read More

Yzabel / July 29, 2005

True or not? She sure looks like it. Seen on the BBC News online page, this article mentions how Japanese develop ‘female’ android:

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised – a “female” android called Repliee Q1.She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

Putting aside all the considerations that can be had regarding how technology in that domain has progressed, going from barely able to stand pieces of metal to an almost human-looking one, I can’t prevent myself from thinking furiously to Philip K. Dick and to his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. There are implications and ramifications here, that could ge way beyond what one would expect. Real androids, that could one day pass for humans and fool even the most observant minds… perhaps even starting by their own. Fascinating and yet frightening thought, too, for us who are so bent on our identity.For the moment, though, perhaps it’s best to simply take it as what it’s meant to be — technical progress in action?

Yzabel / July 21, 2005

It always feels so weird, when a figure that has lived for so long in memories and in imagination sees the real, human counterpart behind it die…Scotty of “Star Trek” fame dies at his Redmond home

LOS ANGELES – James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original “Star Trek” TV series and motion pictures who responded to the command “Beam me up, Scotty,” died early today. He was 85.Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, he said.The Canadian-born Doohan was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.”The producers asked me which one I preferred,” Doohan recalled 30 years later. “I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, ‘If this character is going to be an engineer, you’d better make him a Scotsman.”‘The series, which starred William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as the enigmatic Mr. Spock, attracted an enthusiastic following of science fiction fans, especially among teenagers and children, but not enough ratings power. NBC canceled it after three seasons.

Yzabel / July 9, 2005

HNN has published a number of articles, interviews and analysis about the recent London bombings and what can be seen as warnings and consequences. Whether everyone would agree with the exposed theories or not is another story, but they remain an interesting kind of insight nonetheless.Why the London Attack Was Not Unexpected: An insight on certain opinions that could have been very clear warning sights.The Time of Revenge Has Come: And why the post 9/11 choices and actions have probably helped to shape the current situation worldwide, instead of preventing it. Close to this is also Irfan A. Khawaja’s article.Read more of it on their 7/7 hot topics page.

Yzabel / July 8, 2005

In a much odd way, I caught this through the Guardian’s games blog, and no sooner had I started reading that I rezlized how true, accurate and shocking it was, in all the banality of the moment, when the human brain seems to simply shut off in order to allow us to go through the stress and horror of such a moment.This is David McCarthy’s experience of yesterday’s bombings in London – of one of them, in particular. I cannot truly express everything that is contained in this post, from the calm-before-the-storm seconds preceeding the explosion to the eeriness of getting out alive and not knowing how terrible things had been until the news started reporting it. His post covers it all.