On Bullies...

In my past life, I was a high school teacher. Prior to that I was... a summa cum laude graduate, marching band member, choir member, statistician for the wrestling team, treasurer of the drama club, mathlete, and science geek. And those were the good years. In my younger years, I was... less cool than that. (Actually, as odd as it sounds, my high school years were awesome. I truly believe it had a lot to do with the school I went to as it encouraged activity cross-overs.)

The point is between my years of nerdiness and my years teaching, I've seen more than my fair share of bullies. And I've heard about even more.

Lately there's been a lot of talk on the internet about bullies on review sites--specifically GoodReads. The thing is... I think the people using that word either never dealt with bullies or forgot what it was like.

When children are in school and being bullied, there are a few things that they tend to have in common...
- Bullies attack outsiders. They rarely target the jocks or the popular kids or the rich kids. They go after those who are different or who don't have a lot of friends.
- The bullies hide what they do from anyone who can do anything about it. They don't throw kids against lockers in front of teachers. They do it when anyone with authority isn't around. They don't taunt their targets aloud in class, they whisper when the teacher is helping another student.
- They can't be avoided. Bullies are in the same school, oftentimes in the same classes, as their targets. Those students can't just walk away or pretend they don't exist because they are always there.
- They follow their targets. Bullies will wait outside practices to torment students after school. They will send them messages online to follow them home. The abuse is doesn't stop when the target leaves school.
- The people who try to stand up to bullies are often targets themselves. Bullies attack where they see weakness. That means that the only hope for targets is strength in numbers--something that rarely happens.

None of this seems to be true of the instances of "reviewer-bullying." Reviewers are, by definition, critical--it's part of the job. When an author (or publisher or agent or publicist) chooses to send a book out for review, they are aware of the possibility that there will be both good and bad reactions to the work... just like they'll get from readers when the book hits shelves. This is part of the gig.

Are some people jerks--especially with the anonymity allowed by the internet? Yes. Is GoodReads home to a lot of them? Also yes. There are reasons authors are advised to avoid their reviews. It's because even the "good" ones can sting.

The bad ones? Those are brutal. The assholes? Even worse. I've seen some of the horrible stuff trolls have said about books by friends of mine. They are vicious and nasty.

But here's the difference... the author and any of their fans has the ability to walk away from those reviews and foul comments--and never see them again. The "reviewer-bullies" don't seem to be following authors home or sending them death threats. The worst they've done? Gone on Twitter and mentioned their experience with the book and/or author. Contrary to popular belief, Twitter is not high school (or even elementary or middle school)--it's too damn big a crowd for people to just follow. One person tweets a bad experience? Even if it's re-tweeted by a hundred people, it's still only hitting a small corner of the internet. And that assumes there are a hundred people who are going to believe it on face-value.

That's not bullying. It might not be nice, but it's not bullying.

Also? There are a shit-ton of fantastic people who review books and blog about them and use good reads. A negative review doesn't mean someone is not a great person. We're supposed to be adults here. We should know the difference.

On the other side of things, authors need to learn not to feed the potential for negative publicity. I've seen an instance of an author responding in the comments to a negative review by posting all their amazon reviews as evidence the reviewer was "wrong." I've seen where people associated with an author have blasted reviews and reviewers on GoodReads. I've seen authors trying to discredit reviewers (though I'm still a little confused on how you discredit someone's opinion unless you can prove it isn't actually their opinion, but...)

People can disagree without it being bullying. People can have opinions without it being bullying. People are allowed to dislike each other without it being bullying.

To put it another way, if I went out with a guy who mis-treated me, you can be sure I would let all my girlfriends know. That doesn't make me a bully to the guy who treated me poorly, it makes me a good friend to those other girls that I've warned away from him. Some of them might choose to go out with him anyway and might end up liking him, but I would never regret telling them about my bad experience.

Instead of beating up the people whose reviews you don't agree with, either walk away from them or write your own very positive review. Be proactive rather than reactive. And for the love of all that is good, don't choose to become an actual bully in retaliation.

NaNo Rebels and Team Purple

I'll get to the NaNoRebels stuff at the end. First, though, I want to talk about something more important. What's more important than NaNo, you ask?

Bullying.

That's right. Last year on 10/20, people wore purple in support of the It Gets Better Project. I'm wearing my purple now, are you? If not, you should be, because there's a damn good chance bullying touched your life in some way. Were you the bully? Were you the one on the receiving end of the beat-downs (mental, emotional or physical)? Was someone you loved?

It Gets Better is a program aimed specifically to LGBT youth, but the problem of bullying is so pervasive that none of it should be ignored. In some ways, we've made strides and certain things that were once commonly used insults have--at least among most young people--have fallen out of fashion. It's no longer "cool" to call someone a fag or a retard or numerous other things. But bullying still exists and it's not okay.

When I used to teach high school, there were teachers who were incensed at the idea of their students using certain words (nigger, fag, dyke, retard...the list goes on) because they saw it as a form of bullying. But the openly gay student whose locker was broken into? He was the one fined for the damage. The chubby girl? It was perfectly acceptable in their minds for insults to be hurled her way. Apparently those were descriptive. Pardon me while I throw up all over again. These teachers even went so far as to make snide comments about a parent after conferences because the woman had the gaul to wear a leather skirt to conferences--the tramp.

This tramp made sure to wear leather to school every day for the rest of the semester.

The fact of the matter is, bullying doesn't stop once you're out of your teens. But it does get better, because the people who aren't assholes grow up and are against bullying. They stand in the corners of the people being mis-treated. It gets better because you know you aren't alone.

I told a friend today that I hope a time comes when we don't need to wear purple on 10/20. When bullying in all its forms disappears because the bullies no longer get the attention they crave. But until that time comes, I am Team Purple. Are you?

As for my NaNoRebels. Last week's post has a list of people participating. If you want to pimp this out and get a bigger group, please do. The more the merrier. In the meantime, the lovely Tammy Crosby has made us a little thing to put on our blogs (button? avatar? picture square?). I love it and I hope you do too. I might even use it as my twitter pic in November :) Grab it and help promote the cause. Mine in the sidebar will link back to the sign-up post. If you want to do the same, here's the linky for that: http://julieparticka.blogspot.com/2011/10/welcome-nanorebels.html