Dust and echoes
Jul. 3rd, 2021 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12In the past couple of days, two stories have been making the rounds, discussed as emblematic of the intense toxicity and problems with Twitter, specifically Twitter as used as a marketing tool and social space for the SFF and YA publishing communities (of which there is of course considerable overlap).
The first is an interview with Isabel Fall, an author whose debut short story (under that nom de plume) and very identity were the subject of a hideous Twitter pile on early last year. Content note for discussions of transphobia, dysphoria, misgendering and harassment.
The second is an essay by YA commentator and critic Nicole Brinkley. Its title is 'Did Twitter Break YA?' which I assume speaks for itself.
As you might imagine, as someone who find Twitter pretty close to unbearable, and who wrote an essay last year about the problems inherent in an entire profession blurring the lines between marketing tool and social circle, these two posts resonated a lot.
That being said, putting the blame solely at Twitter's door, rending metaphorical garments about the evils of 'the algorithm' and 'parasocial relationships' and calling it a day doesn't really get to the heart of the problem. Twitter is a tool, and, like all tools used by human beings, those human beings bring the best and the worst of themselves (as individuals and as groups/communities) to the platform. The problems I've witnessed with YA and SFF Twitter certainly reached fever pitch on that platform, but I witnessed versions of the same blowups on Tumblr, and on Livejournal and personal blogs before that. I'm seeing a lot of authors jump ship to Instagram (which is of course entirely their right), but unless there is some serious soul-searching, they risk bringing the same problems with them to the new platform.
The problem with what the SFF community did to Isabel Fall was not Twitter: it was bullying, weaponising/gatekeeping of identity and authenticity (ironic given the subject of Fall's short story), and a discomfort with representation of marginalised identities/experiences that did not toe the party line. Twitter was the medium. There are people who participated in the pile on who have only offered qualified apologies, filled with special pleading, or who have not apologised at all. They hounded a trans woman back into the closet! They tried to police the identities of those who said they enjoyed Fall's story! That's not Twitter's fault — that's people choosing to be awful, to gatekeep and harass.
The problem with 'toxic YA Twitter' is not Twitter (nor is it really the open secret that most YA is bought by adult readers and is therefore written with that readership in mind): it is the fact that publishing has created this fevered atmosphere of scarcity in which it's a prudent marketing strategy to weaponise and gatekeep identity, representation and authenticity and direct Twitter mobs towards the competition. (And this ties into the wider problem of doing away with specialist marketing departments and expecting authors to handle their own marketing using social media.) Twitter, again, is the medium.
I don't have any easy solutions, because many of these problems have sprung from very worthwhile, sincere intentions — a desire to push against structural inequalities in publishing, a desire to create more stories for readers who deserve to see their lives mirrored in fiction more frequently, and to see those stories succeed. But the solution to these problems is not to rigidly define 'good representation' — that leads to people's experiences being erased, identities being policed, and Twitter mobs being directed at those whose representation is deemed to be insufficiently pure.
I do not seek a world absent of critique, negative reviews, or a wide range of reactions to every single story. But I do seek a world in which the first weapon in the arsenal of critique is not identity policing. I seek a world in which the behaviour of people in the SFF and YA communities is given greater weight in determining their character than the community's reaction to the content of their fiction. And I seek a world in which the intentions and moral character of SFF and YA readers who enjoy messy stories, dark stories, morally grey or villainous characters, and the kinds of relationships they'd never enjoy in real life are not constantly called into question.
The first is an interview with Isabel Fall, an author whose debut short story (under that nom de plume) and very identity were the subject of a hideous Twitter pile on early last year. Content note for discussions of transphobia, dysphoria, misgendering and harassment.
The second is an essay by YA commentator and critic Nicole Brinkley. Its title is 'Did Twitter Break YA?' which I assume speaks for itself.
As you might imagine, as someone who find Twitter pretty close to unbearable, and who wrote an essay last year about the problems inherent in an entire profession blurring the lines between marketing tool and social circle, these two posts resonated a lot.
That being said, putting the blame solely at Twitter's door, rending metaphorical garments about the evils of 'the algorithm' and 'parasocial relationships' and calling it a day doesn't really get to the heart of the problem. Twitter is a tool, and, like all tools used by human beings, those human beings bring the best and the worst of themselves (as individuals and as groups/communities) to the platform. The problems I've witnessed with YA and SFF Twitter certainly reached fever pitch on that platform, but I witnessed versions of the same blowups on Tumblr, and on Livejournal and personal blogs before that. I'm seeing a lot of authors jump ship to Instagram (which is of course entirely their right), but unless there is some serious soul-searching, they risk bringing the same problems with them to the new platform.
The problem with what the SFF community did to Isabel Fall was not Twitter: it was bullying, weaponising/gatekeeping of identity and authenticity (ironic given the subject of Fall's short story), and a discomfort with representation of marginalised identities/experiences that did not toe the party line. Twitter was the medium. There are people who participated in the pile on who have only offered qualified apologies, filled with special pleading, or who have not apologised at all. They hounded a trans woman back into the closet! They tried to police the identities of those who said they enjoyed Fall's story! That's not Twitter's fault — that's people choosing to be awful, to gatekeep and harass.
The problem with 'toxic YA Twitter' is not Twitter (nor is it really the open secret that most YA is bought by adult readers and is therefore written with that readership in mind): it is the fact that publishing has created this fevered atmosphere of scarcity in which it's a prudent marketing strategy to weaponise and gatekeep identity, representation and authenticity and direct Twitter mobs towards the competition. (And this ties into the wider problem of doing away with specialist marketing departments and expecting authors to handle their own marketing using social media.) Twitter, again, is the medium.
I don't have any easy solutions, because many of these problems have sprung from very worthwhile, sincere intentions — a desire to push against structural inequalities in publishing, a desire to create more stories for readers who deserve to see their lives mirrored in fiction more frequently, and to see those stories succeed. But the solution to these problems is not to rigidly define 'good representation' — that leads to people's experiences being erased, identities being policed, and Twitter mobs being directed at those whose representation is deemed to be insufficiently pure.
I do not seek a world absent of critique, negative reviews, or a wide range of reactions to every single story. But I do seek a world in which the first weapon in the arsenal of critique is not identity policing. I seek a world in which the behaviour of people in the SFF and YA communities is given greater weight in determining their character than the community's reaction to the content of their fiction. And I seek a world in which the intentions and moral character of SFF and YA readers who enjoy messy stories, dark stories, morally grey or villainous characters, and the kinds of relationships they'd never enjoy in real life are not constantly called into question.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-03 03:56 pm (UTC)I think one of the most horrifying things is that the mob feels it's truly well intentioned and that its actions are justified. As the writer of the Fall interview said: I believe they truly feel that trans stories should only be written by trans people and that Fall should have had to out herself before publishing. I believe they believe — still — that they did the right thing. They still destroyed a woman’s life. I want to believe that we'll get past the strident voices of identity and thought policing, the kneejerk bullying and harassment that recklessly destroys lives, but the road ahead sure looks bumpy :(
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 04:47 pm (UTC)And to me this just underlines how shallow and kneejerk and disingenuous their accusations are, as are all criticisms based on an author's identity as opposed to the content of their work. It's lazy as well as sickening.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 08:59 pm (UTC)I dunno. I guess the cliche is the children and grandchildren of the people who fought the battle just weren't alive to see what the stakes were, but the Bluest Eye is one of the most challenged books in 2021! That was published the year I was born! The author won the Nobel Prize! It's not like we're living in some post-everything utopia here.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-07 01:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, seriously. I have a lot of problems with the sheer amount of porn we have in our culture and I do kind of worry about young kids having access to it, but anyone who thinks actual regulation would fix that...has not paid attention to the way the world works.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 11:00 am (UTC)That was one of the most disturbing elements of this whole affair, and it's something I've come to believe is the common denominator in a lot of these Twitter pile ons. Whatever the instigators tell themselves, and however much pain or righteous rage they feel, subconsciously an attitude has developed that that bullying is acceptable if it's directed at the right target. There's a lot of lofty talk of 'punching up,' as if they're out there taking the fight to a bunch of far-right extremists, but it appears to me that in fact in the majority of these cases, the mob is haranguing a (marginalised) newcomer to the field — someone at the bottom of the hierarchy, and outside their social circles.
I've seen this case with Fall discussed elsewhere, and the conclusion was that her very anonymity — minimal biography, no social media presence, unknown to the movers and shakers of 'progressive' SFF — painted the target on her back, because so many people in this community rely on contextual clues about the author (demographics, who their friends are on Twitter, who's promoting their story) to actually interpret the author's work, rather than the work itself. So they were condemning not the short story itself (even if that's what they claimed), but, subconsciously, the fact that the author didn't sit somewhere within their observable hierarchy, and it made them uncomfortable, and incapable of interpreting the short story.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 08:43 pm (UTC)k, because so many people in this community rely on contextual clues about the author (demographics, who their friends are on Twitter, who's promoting their story) to actually interpret the author's work, rather than the work itself
This is fascinating. I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but that's so clearly true.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 09:09 pm (UTC)Also it just still fucking burns me up that people read the TITLE, and refused to read any further, but felt compelled to say something anyway. Some people admitted they had read the story and even liked it! but for some reason, that didn't make it into their original online opinions, because they hadn't been personally notified the author was trans. I don't know which of those makes me angrier.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-07 01:48 pm (UTC)That's super disappointing.
That's not a solution! That's not a good alternative!
THANK YOU.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-07 06:51 pm (UTC)The thing that really gets me about this is that reclaimed slurs are a completely normal thing in marginalised communities, including among LBGT people! This is why I think these people's egregious behaviour stemmed from their lack of context for the author, and therefore their complete inability to interpret the story. If exactly the same story (with exactly the same title) had come out with a well-known and acclaimed trans SFF author's name attached to it (especially someone in the social circles of the people who instigated the pile on) I am certain that they would have been lauding it as a clever, dark, and sharp take on complex ideas.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 11:08 am (UTC)I definitely think you're on to something about scarcity structural issues in the publishing industry being at the heart of it. In a healthy industry where publishers were actually able to support a substantial number of writers and didn't essentially require authors to do their own heavy lifting through social media then we just wouldn't be in the position where this stuff had such stakes.
Exactly so — and these are really two separate issues that have crashed up against each other. You've got publishers claiming that they only have one slot available for e.g. a Latino author, or they 'already published a book with gay characters this year' which leds to this sense of scarcity, so that authors view other authors not as their colleagues but as their competition. And then you require them to be on a platform that rewards ill-informed hot takes and immediate reactions, and tell them to sink or swim (and that their future career will be affected by how many sales they can generate by being on this platform). Is it any wonder that this is the result?
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 07:10 pm (UTC)I definitely agree that Twitter makes things a whole lot worse, though.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 07:18 pm (UTC)Ohhh i am definitely missing a piece there because I am only second or third hand on this/ didn't see the original to-do, and don't know who the ppl were making the attack posts. Realizing that Twitter is just another forum for the kind of wank that's made the rounds in different forums for decades adds some perspective. Thanks
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 02:51 am (UTC)Yeah, I liked that essay a lot, and I understand the writer's desire to center Fall's voice and not make it just another internet pile-on, but there's a kind of backlash growing that is upsetting. Plus bullshit like this is not helping. Asking people to own up to what they did instead of writing justifications or even trying to REWRITE HISTORY when the actual tweets are still there....is not mobbing.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 11:17 am (UTC)To be fair, I am not reading every single reply directed at those who apologised (or 'apologised'), and no doubt there are some people who've leapt into the situation in order to shit-stir or settle their own grudges, but asking for accountability is not bullying.
I genuinely believe a lot of people involved in the mobbing of Isabel Fall feel that this sort of behaviour is acceptable as long as it's directed at the 'right' target, and if Fall hadn't outed herself as trans (in much the same way as Becky Albertalli felt pressured into outing herself as bi, etc, etc) they would continue to feel entirely justified in their behaviour. And many — rather than offering an unqualified apology — seem to be self-pityingly angling for absolution. They want their friends and community to tell them that they were right to have reacted in the way they did to the title of Fall's short story, and that their motives were pure.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 05:26 pm (UTC)There are also several people implying that the toxicity is solely coming from readers and the easy access to authors that they get via social media, whereas most of the worst instances of Twitter pile ons that I can think of were instigated and led by professionally published authors, and other promininent figures in the SFF and YA publishing communities.
Yeah, it seems like there's a lot of punching down either by people who feel the Need to Speak because they have such a big audience (Scalzi used to do this a lot), or people who rather disingenuously claim not to realize they obvious power and influence they have (Warren Ellis recently claiming "I was just this guy and had aaaabsolutely no idea people looked up to me or would feel they couldn't say no to me" was really something). Which is again not something that Twitter started but Twitter really rewards, with the follower count and likes and RTs and quote metrics all being visible, and what drive most of the engagement.
And many — rather than offering an unqualified apology — seem to be self-pityingly angling for absolution. They want their friends and community to tell them that they were right to have reacted in the way they did to the title of Fall's short story, and that their motives were pure.
Yeah, I think I'm seeing that with most of the apologies -- the idea that either the person apologizing was hurt and lashing out, or just trying to express concern for people who were hurt.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 09:21 pm (UTC)The article seems to argue that while the behavior wasn't at all justifiable, it was explainable by the transphobia that is endemic on social media; and of course the system of Twitter. Which...even giving the benefit of the doubt that these are the two primary reasons for Fall being the victim of an internet mob, still doesn't explain why similar incidents have happened and will continue to. When I was googling the article for further background, I kept bumping into the case of the 20-something PR person who tweeted about AIDS and Africa back in 2014 (or so). Though I'm sure many people feel she deserved what she got.
I think there is this tendency on the part of the wider public to view each incident as sui generis (despite talking about broken Twitter). In the aftermath we unpack the particulars of the communities and individuals involved, the material that set off the storm, what the intention behind it was, what could have been done differently. We look for explanations. But while the communities might be different, the specific reasons different, the material different, the resulting behavior and impact on the individual at the heart of the storm seem to be quite similar. And there is always far too much focus on the victim and them proving their worth.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 07:06 pm (UTC)Bad experiences with transphobia may certainly explain why — for example — Neon Yang decided to get involved, but I don't find it convincing when it comes to cis people like NK Jemisin, who admitted she gave her own take on the story without having read it. If nothing else, I hope that this episode will teach people to look before they leap, and just approach Twitter with a bit more thoughtfulness, and approach each situation asking themselves if adding their own hot take is actually going to be helpful.
I think there is this tendency on the part of the wider public to view each incident as sui generis (despite talking about broken Twitter). In the aftermath we unpack the particulars of the communities and individuals involved, the material that set off the storm, what the intention behind it was, what could have been done differently. We look for explanations.
Agreed, which is why I think it's important to look at who was involved, and whether there are any long-term patterns of behaviour — a lot of the people who leapt into the fray in the Isobel Fall situation are names I recognise from the past fifteen years of online conflicts and pile ons, predating Twitter in some cases. This is why I'm so insistent that focusing on toxic platforms is a huge mistake: we need to look at people (individual bad actors, and bad group dynamics) and focus on their behaviour.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 11:26 am (UTC)I think the YA Twitter essay suffers in that its two central theses are flawed. She places the blame for the toxicity of the YA community at the feet of a) Twitter and b) the fact that its readership is mainly adults and the marketing expectations reflect that. Whereas I think the toxicity flows from the paranoid attitudes of scarcity which encourage authors to view other authors not as their colleagues but as their competition (and so accusing another author of writing a book full of problematic content becomes a prudent marketing strategy), and the fact that professional marketing teams have been replaced by a requirement for authors to market their own work on social media, especially on Twitter (which rewards loud pile ons).
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 05:33 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, definitely -- books "for children" weren't written the same way and adults also read them (like what, Water Babies?) and I was thinking more of a marketing phenomenon that really kicked off post-Twilight (the Bronte novels got "rebranded" in horrifying ways). I meant more like certain novels, especially the ones for girls, got shifted more and more into the YA aisle, although a lot of them are still sold as adult novels too. But even that didn't really start booming after Harry Potter.
I can remember a huge number of thinkpieces about 'adults reading children's literature, isn't that weird?' in newspapers in the early 2000s.
LOL yes! Along with claims that adults were only buying it to read to their children as a wholesome family affair, when that obviously wasn't true and people of all ages were buying the books.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 04:06 am (UTC)The line about author contracts requiring an active social media presence certainly starts to explain why YA authors are more 'online' than other genres. And I still find it interesting that YA is mostly purchased by adults, I'm moderately curious why though I suspect the answer wouldn't be as interesting.
I have seen more authors / high-profile readers/reviewers on Instagram and I suppose at first glance it certainly allows a level of control, but both Twitter and Instagram can be very individualist focused.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 11:39 am (UTC)I totally agree. Nobody owes any Twitter mob any more of their identity or experiences than they are willing to share. This escalating demand to do so basically hands a weapon to anyone who wishes to harm you.
The line about author contracts requiring an active social media presence certainly starts to explain why YA authors are more 'online' than other genres.
I think I've talked about this with you in the past, but I used to be a newspaper book reviewer of YA novels, during the time period covering 2001-2013. Right up until the last years of this period, I was always dealing with specialist marketing departments — they'd either have sent my newspaper a batch of ARCs for review, or I'd be able to ring up or email the relevant department, get through to a named individual and request a copy of the specific book I wanted to review. Same went for author interviews — they'd either reach out to my paper directly, or I would contact the marketing/publicity team and request an interview, and they'd help me set it up. This was all presumably viewed as worthwhile, and the assumption was that my reviews and interviews would be read by the adult parents who read the paper, who would then go out and buy the books for their teenage children. (There was no assumption that teenagers were reading my reviews, and indeed although my early shtick was that I was a teenager reviewing YA professionally, my editor told me always to remember that I was writing for parents, not the teens who would read the books.)
That entire infrastructure disappeared at some point in the past decade (so too did most newspaper book reviewing, to be fair), and instead all the marketing (unless the author was a bestseller or writing acclaimed literary fiction) fell on authors. They had to be online, do unpaid 'blog tours', commission artists to do preorder giveaway campaigns, work with Youtubers and Bookstagram types, and so on. This change is particularly acute in YA because I suspect there's a misapprehension that those writing for a teen readership need to be on social media where the teens are!
I have seen more authors / high-profile readers/reviewers on Instagram and I suppose at first glance it certainly allows a level of control, but both Twitter and Instagram can be very individualist focused.
Any platform that allows others to share your content with the click of a button (which is possible in Instagram) is going to have the same problems that Twitter does. It's calmer than Twitter at the moment, but that's because people leave most of their vitriol and social media activism on Twitter, not because Instagram prevents that sort of thing!
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 01:47 pm (UTC)On the Twitter thing, I am 50/50 about it. Medium is the Message after all and while I don't doubt that YA or SFF on LJ had vicious incidences, the new way of Social Media does change something structurally. This includes all of Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and so on. A friend of mine is a big proponent of the structure the current fannish centers take aggravating issues. There is no real way to keep posts small, like marking them personal for only a small group of people or stopping them from being retweetable. There is also a lot to be said about the horrible search features, a-chronological timelines and pushing of the most outrageous content.
That's not to say Twitter is the only thing to blame, the fandom wank archives prove that. But maybe it would play out slower, give people more time to think instead of react and offer more opportunities to stop the avalanche of it all.
But yeah, moving to instagram will not change this in any way.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 06:54 pm (UTC)I totally agree with all of this, and the speed at which Twitter mobs can happen, and the sheer overwhelming numbers of people that descend make it uniquely horrible. But that said, a lot of the people who did this to Isabel Fall were people I remember back from the LJ days, who never met a conflict they didn't gleefully join in.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-07 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-06 08:36 pm (UTC)Yes. I do think that Twitter, by its nature, exacerbates the size of these things. What could have been an ugly but fairly small spat back in the LJ days becomes much bigger, more visible, more public. But the gatekeeping tendency would be a problem even then, because that's coming from the people, not the platform.
it is the fact that publishing has created this fevered atmosphere of scarcity in which it's a prudent marketing strategy to weaponise and gatekeep identity, representation and authenticity and direct Twitter mobs towards the competition.
Yeah. I don't fully understand the why of it all, but I think that's an accurate assessment.
But I do seek a world in which the first weapon in the arsenal of critique is not identity policing. I seek a world in which the behaviour of people in the SFF and YA communities is given greater weight in determining their character than the community's reaction to the content of their fiction. And I seek a world in which the intentions and moral character of SFF and YA readers who enjoy messy stories, dark stories, morally grey or villainous characters, and the kinds of relationships they'd never enjoy in real life are not constantly called into question.
Amen.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-07 06:44 pm (UTC)