The "Troll in The Mirror" and The Bullying Nature of Catfights on Goodreads


This just discovered by one of our editors. In "Battle of The Trolls" on Salon.Com, writer Laura Miller talks about the horror show of Goodreads and the endless catfighting taking place on the website, each side trying to outdo the other in terms of pure nastiness. The article opens with commentary about a particular author who stalked her troll critic, then half way down, the article diverges onto the subject of Goodreads which we all know possesses a mob psychology eerily similar to that of the bully swarm on Absolute Write. It's interesting to observe the similarities:

The authors picked quarrels with their critics and bombarded them with emails demanding that reviews be deleted or changed. The reviewers banded together to retaliate, descending on the book pages for “badly behaving authors” and posting scathing one-star reviews, whether or not they’d read the book in question. A website called Stop the Goodreads Bullies — uncritically cited by Hale in her essay — was formed by anonymous parties to “expose” and revile the most active reviewers in this group. Eventually, Goodreads introduced a policy dictating that reviews referring to an author’s behavior would be deleted, but things have barely cooled down since.

By now, both sides have accused each other of trolling, bullying, harassment and doxxing (the publication of personal information online). Employers have been contacted and urged to fire the combatants. People’s families have been written about in disturbing ways. Each side is convinced that it is far more sinned against than sinning... Reader attacks can take the form of scores of one-star Goodreads reviews, often tweeted at the author to make sure they’re noticed, and menacing emails that may or may not originate in the Goodreads community. (Several traditionally published YA authors contacted me to say that they and their fellow novelists often felt targeted by such harassment but would not comment on the record for fear of further reprisals.)
Employers have been contacted and urged to fire people. Ahem. Has this happened also on Absolute Write? Aside from death threats, can we as human beings be more vindictive? Again, illustrative of the same bully psychology.
Compounding the paranoia and outrage on both sides is the tendency for social media to act like an alchemist’s alembic, distilling the complicated thoughts and feelings of individuals into generic expressions of self-righteous indignation. It’s not the concision of, say, Twitter that causes this — it’s perfectly possible to express ambivalence in 140 characters — but a hectoring pressure toward pro forma piety and groupthink from small circles of like-minded people who want to present a united ideological front to the world.
Groupthink from small circles. Sound familiar, dear readers? And it's no wonder that AW members also search for power on Goodreads, joining these bands of bullies and becoming a part of the bash fest whenever it suits them. Part of the point we've been trying to make on W.A.R. all along is that all of us who have been, and continue to be targets of bullies on AW, are beset by a common pest known as the iPredator.

And finally, Laura Miller sadly concludes:
Perhaps most insidious of all is the spectacle of genres that profess to champion the strength and value of girls and women descending into the most stereotypical forms of toxic “feminine” behavior: cliques, backbiting, venomous gossip, name-calling, sneakiness and whispery passive-aggressive scheming. Sometimes the worst troll of all is the one in the mirror.

The Flash Trash Advertisements That Support Absolute Write and Its Owner Melodi Sherman

What Keeps Absolute Write Potent and Moneymaking

THIS IS AN UPDATE TO THE POST BELOW. BECAUSE OF OUR EFFORTS AND THOSE OF OTHER WRITERS AND WEBSITES CRITICAL OF THE TRASH ADVERTISING POLICIES OF ABSOLUTE WRITE, THE OWNERS, LISA SPANGENBERG AND MELODI "MACALLISTER" SHERMAN, APPEAR TO HAVE AT LEAST TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED SUCH ADVERTISEMENT AND REPLACED IT WITH MORE BANNER ADS. PLEASE BEWARE OF THESE ADVERTISERS AND TAKE TIME TO INVESTIGATE ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH ABSOLUTE WRITE VERY THOROUGHLY. FEEL FREE TO WRITE US IF YOU SUSPECT A SCAM OF ANY KIND, AND BTW, A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS AND ALLIES WHO ARE HELPING US STRUGGLE TO KEEP THE WRITER INTERNET FREE OF CYBERBULLYING, BAD ADVICE, AND FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY. THE ARTICLE BELOW WILL REMAIN IN PLACE TO CHRONICLE THE RECENT PAST AT ABSOLUTE WRITE. 



[TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT ABSOLUTE WRITE: in this post and others, we are not talking about the beneficial aspects of a writer board like AW, we are discussing an end to the non-beneficial aspects. It is like we're talking about Philly or Oakland in the context of ending rampant corruption and crime. We know there are good places to eat and Barbara Streisand will concert tour, but we want the mayor to surrender to the FBI. And because there are those who have expressed puzzlement, here is a page that lists all the reasons why we maintain this blog. Thank you.]

Yuck! The 15 funniest photos of Walmart Shoppers? Give us a break. The above is just one day's screenshot of the constantly revolving tabloid and pseudo news "flash trash" that accompanies each and every Absolute Write forum page. Just scroll and you'll see them (if you can stomach it). We advise against dipping into their foul tasting soup, but we just had to ask, might not the low class nature of this flash trash be reflective in some way of the personalities of the two people who own and operate Absolute Write, namely Melodi "Mac" Sherman and Lisa "Medievalist" Spangenberg? Is that fair to conjecture? In other words, who would conceive and then consent to placing such ubiquitous garbage on their website for thousands of people to see every week if they did not, at least on some level, tolerate or even embrace it? Would not a normally intelligent and cultured person balk at such a thing? The answer is yes, they would. Of course they would.

Now that W.A.R. and other sites have exposed the utterly incompetent writer advice rampant on Absolute Write, as well as the omnipresent cabal of cyberbullies that routinely attack writers and presses and God knows who else, we will explore the foul soup of Absolute Write flash trash tossed at writers on a daily basis when they visit AW. We wish to investigate just what kind of scams and nonsense Absolute Write is promoting to writers via these advertisements. Obviously this condition is paying the rent and supporting Melodi and Lisa (as well as the "author careers" of certain AW members), but what is this AW sponsored rubbish communicating to the naive, hopeful writers they attract to their website?

We will explore these issues in the weeks to come. 

Thanks to everyone for their incredible support.