Literary Clusterfucks 2013

Elizabeth Bruenig is great

Holy shit the north dakota journalist apologizing to the YA tyrant. xp

Someone in THAT thread accused the reporter, who was apologizing, of having “internalized misogyny” simply because she published a quote from a source.

this is all just popular-girl playground shit tbh

I would probably read a YA book about YA author drama.

sarah dessen is a really popular girl and some dork (who the fuck are you?) has dared speak against her. that dork shall pay!!!

that is literally all that has happened here

Dessen has 269,000 followers on Twitter, btw, just for those who might not know how popular her books really are.

I can understand how YA authors feel devalued by being labelled as writing books only fit for immature audiences. otoh, that YA label also helps them to acquire an audience and sell their books. if the YA marketing niche didn't exist and they had to simply compete for attention in the general fiction marketplace, the great majority of them would not have career to be defensive about. but, whatever you do, don't tell them that.

it really is just a bunch of privileged white women and their friends dunking on a recent college grad because she dared question the literary merit of their output. i'd say it's unbelievable that this is a national news story, but it isn't, because these ghouls will do anything to make a buck off their shitty pulp.

Apologies for the pvmic but it’s all so infuriatingly American to boot.

fuck why'd you have to take on the most popular girl in the school, daaaaamn

reckon there's cachet in this yet for young b nelson though, she's spoken up for Criticism and Real Literature, and gone viral doing so. a promising future awaits. maybe even a popular one

that said the aesthetics of s dessen sicking her gang onto this poor kid are monstrous, just like high school

It's all so dumb. Other writers group hugging Desser ("it's SO AWFUL and UNFAIR what this teenager said about your books"), journalists apologizing (wtf), others trying to make this about YA, about feminism/misogyny etc, about voices and stories not being heard... When, like LJ said, an overly sensitive highly popular person picked on an unknown teenager and reaped the cuddles and kind words that were sent to her en masse. Ugh.

table otm

it's SO AWFUL and UNFAIR what this teenager said about your books

I'm sorry but why does everyone keep making this 2017 college graduate into a teenager?

Like "A bunch of famous women ganged up on a 23 or 24 year old" doesn't sound bad enough?

I think this happened when she was a junior in college

yeah, but the article where she bragged about it is recent

I was of the impression this happened when she was a teenager, so

Not that it matters a whole lot.

powerful overlap energy with the taytay thread rn

but that one involves the most popular girl on the planet

but yeah, there people are suggesting she's sending suicide bomber stans at Big Machine

GTFOH with 'bragged'

i'll stay thanks

President Keyes, are you Jennifer Weiner?

I think president keyes has a valid point—trying to construct this former student into the “perfect victim” falls into the same kind of trap the YA twitter mob does, exaggerating power discrepancies for emotional effect

i'll take that, sure, but it's not like she was "wrong" or insulting in her original statements.

these Ashleys or Heathers or whatever, well, they're all wrong. Period.

i dislike this popular girl framing

where is ed champion when we need him

(j/k!)

The “popular girl” thing feels like a dodgy take imo I think it just seems like your typical twitter callout/pile-on/fallout that happens pretty frequently in a lot of different contexts for reasons both legit and dumb.

I think it’s more to do with the cannibalistic mob atmosphere of Twitter we all love so much than it does “popular girls”

So yeah otm.

I absolutely messed up. When I responded to Dessen’s tweet I didn’t read the article just the screenshot. I related to a fellow author feeling the sting of criticism. I had no idea the young woman was not anonymous or was being harassed. I apologize for my part in all this.

— roxane gay (@rgay) November 15, 2019

lol oh shit gotta protect the brand

I feel like there is some overcorrection too.

Like some in that thread speculated that the girl who was piled on lost professional opportunities because she was piled on by prominent authors.

I doubt it to be honest. No one will remember this.

It just seems in all directions the discourse is unhinged and out of control.

"The Callout, The Pile-On, The Apology"
fave Jodeci album

Social media is just dumb

I doubt it to be honest. No one will remember this.

― treeship., Friday, November 15, 2019 3:41 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

pretty sure the college kid will remember this!

Sure but it won’t ruin their employment prospects, which is what people were speculating on that thread.

She didn’t do anything wrong.

Tangentially related to "Twitter justice" and celebs unleashing their fans on people, Lizzo is now getting sued by the Postmates driver that she blasted on Twitter along with the girl's name and photo(!) for supposedly stealing her food. Allegedly, the driver just couldn't reach her by phone to confirm her hotel room, so she gave up trying to deliver it.

Bringing it up here since it seems like one of the first(?) high profile examples of a celebrity potentially facing consequences for stirring up their fans via Twitter.

Is YA indie twee infantilism in book form? Discuss.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/sarah-dessen-ya-books-authors-brooke-nelson-social-media-attack.html

pretty sure the college kid will remember this

lol she is studying this phenomenon in grad school, it will probably turn up in a chapter in her thesis

ahaha maybe she engineered this knowing exactly how it would play

call the IRB!! IRB!!!!!!

Something important I’d like to say. pic.twitter.com/3MIhe5rxxH

— sarahdessen (@sarahdessen) November 15, 2019

in roxane gay's replies there are still all sorts of sycophants who think she's so amazing for being able to do this; in dessen's replies it's merciless scolds

hahahaha

if a literary clusterfuck is not amusing, it amounts to nothing in the end

that is a remarkably non-specific apology

she's framing it as a learning experience for herself moreso than a terrifying experience for this young person

i mean she's not even spelling out what she did wrong, let alone accounting for what the college grad must have gone through. was the issue really that she was not "aware of what I put out there"?