Recently Amanda and I did a Weedy AMA where we answered questions from the Podcast Patreon for a bonus episode – one that starts out pretty cogent and then derails a fair bit as I lose my train of thought.

One of the questions asked, to paraphrase, has online critique softened over the years, and why?

My answer was: Yes. Because safety.

Blogs used to be little micro-communities, and somewhat insulated from the larger internet, and especially from griefing trolls. That hasn’t been true for at least a decade, but it’s even worse now that there are seemingly legions of hobbyists who love to dox individuals whose opinions they don’t like, and engage in a campaign of harassment and misery over said opinion. It’s even more acute now that entire platforms have been given over to these fuckos, and the rhetoric of hate and divide has escalated to violence and assassination.

It’s trendy to attack someone and endanger them because their opinion is unacceptable. This happens on a large and small scale, and I know you have seen it. There are certain people who decide that other human beings aren’t people, or perhaps get so angry they forget. Consideration of humanity is optional, or altogether discouraged.

I started After Dark, in fact, partly to give you a place to comment where your comment, and your username, weren’t as easily accessed. I don’t want to stifle conversation but I recognize that being on the internet and having an opinion can bring on a world of hurt if some rando takes issue. Said randos don’t see their opposition as humans; they are targets to be destroyed.

Critique, as I said in the episode, isn’t softened because we’re all being nicer or whatever. Critique is softened (or not published at all) because I don’t want to deal with unhinged, poorly behaved fans, and especially when those unhinged, poorly behaved fans are weaponized as a collective. It sucks to moderate the comments on a post that’s reached a wider circle than usual, but that’s the job. I take the safety of the comments section very seriously because I, out here using my real name like a giant dumbass, know how dangerous, actually factually real-life dangerous, it can be. I want this to be a safe place to express your opinion.

So, let’s talk about Ali Hazelwood, who was allegedly bullied off Instagram because she preferred one Hunger Games character, and apparently picked the wrong one?

No, seriously. That’s what happened today.

If I’m tracing this fuckery correctly, 8 days ago, a user, allegedly a karma farmer, posted to r/HungerGames a clip of a panel wherein Ali calls Peeta “useless.” Which is clearly in context a hyperbolic joke meant for the audience of that panel? Yet even the comments on that post on Reddit seem to take her opinion so personally.

Hazelwood had, per the last crawl of a search engine because her IG page is in fact gone, nearly 600,000 followers, and she was pretty active, too. Allegedly her comments about Peeta caused such Intense Rage, the number of cruel comments and DMs caused her to nuke her account.

From what I’ve been reading, this situation seems to be a two-pronged problem.

Prong the First (not to be confused with Prong the Elder, or Prong the Haberdasher): Instagram has a shitty user interface.

Per Susan Lee on Threads, Hazelwood is fine, couldn’t figure out how to disable comments, so deleted the account.

Girl. I can relate. Instagram defies my attempts to use it, too.

Prong the Second: Some people are being really shitty, and it’s a continuation of a growing problem in behavior choices, emotional regulation, and access.

There’s a straight downward slope of a line between a person unleashing vitriol over an author expressing preference for a character (again: ??!?!?!?!!!) and doorstepping someone to scream at or kill them. Harassment online can lead to additional acts of violence. I’m not kidding, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating, either. The link between online harassment and offline violence is real, and being studied:

What’s most infuriating is that this behavior is from people who read a book in 2008 and take that book so personally that they decided to attack Ali Hazelwood about comments she made on a panel with other authors in a discussion that was meant to be tongue-in-cheek and entertaining for the people in the room.

But the behavior choices and lack of emotional regulation are alarming.

This isn’t neckbearded trolls with compromised assessments of their own position in the world.

This is us. This is allegedly book fandoms.

Stop it.

This situation, which is simultaneously scary and harmful, and deeply fucking unhinged and asinine, is a combination of a number of negative factors, each of which could be a whole essay.

• There’s the intense one-sided relationships some fans have with authors, with books, or with characters (or all three).
• There’s the flattening of an author (who is, in fact, usually a person, AI notwithstanding) into not being a person, but being an idea or a figure to be railed at or against.
• There’s the expectation that an author will connect with readers as part of their job, and will cultivate that connection on social media.
• There’s the social expectation of performing moral and ethical correctness especially online. Whether or not actual behavior is moral and ethical or correct is irrelevant. The point is the performance of correctness: like the correct people, like the correct things, etc.
• There’s the unleashed and encouraged rage that has led to real life violence that frequently starts online.
• There’s the knowledge that stating an opinion publicly might mean someone tries to harm, embarrass, or kill you.

Now, I have unleashed many a rageful opinion (I have many! Ask me about influencer children, mommy blogging, and child endangerment and exploitation) and I have most definitely hurt someone’s feelings with my opinion about a book or the genre or anything. But as I’ve said many times, the book and the author are very separate things. I see miles of distance between the book and the person. I’m talking about a book most of the time. It doesn’t have feelings.

For example, I don’t like Ali Hazelwood’s books. I’ve tried several. They are not my thing.

But to some readers, I’ve just written down some treasonous statements worthy of many, many angry email messages and social media DMs. Y’all, my inbox is a busy place, so please get in line. Your email will be deleted in the order in which it was received.

Apparently at this point in the timeline, readers with feelings about book characters felt that hurling rage and hatred about Peeta (PEETA) was and is acceptable behavior?

If it weren’t so frightening to see digital harassment turn into assassinations, this might have been a funny story someday.

Like consider the absurdity of telling someone who isn’t online that Ali Hazelwood, a world-famous bestselling author, nuked her entire Instagram because people were digitally abusing her over a joke comment she made on an author panel about Peeta, a 2008 character who isn’t real. And because Instagram’s UX sucks, don’t forget that part.

So, yeah, critique hasn’t softened. It’s retreated. Places to express a critical opinion are becoming fewer and more private, and to express a critical opinion is to invite a world of hurt.

Y’all. It’s a book character. Please calm down. You’re ruining things.

Apparently it does?

Can you just not?