Read on Twitter
If my agent threw me under the bus like this I would fire him immediately. It wouldn't even be a question. It's just insane what goes on in this corner of the literary world.
2/ The controversy in question involves an author doing a slightly unhinged tweetstorm against another author's opinions on some dumb controversy. The second author happened to be nonwhite, so disagreeing with her = racism = everyone trying to end her career for days.
3/ In this corner of literary Twitter, unhinged denunciatory tweetstorms are completely normal. Some of the biggest and most popular figures regularly participate in them! It's a very very very strange place. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-a-twitter-mob-destroyed-a-young-immigrant-female-authors-budding-career
4/Some of the responses. Once someone is declared Bad (by angry people on Twitter), you cannot work with them, you cannot say you *care* about them -- you need to do whatever the people screaming at you demand. So many people in the lit world hate this but are scared to speak up.
5/ "I cannot fathom the pain and horror of being the victim of [mean tweets]"
![5/ "I cannot fathom the pain and horror of being the victim of [mean tweets]"](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoPjtAeXMAYToug.png "5/ \"I cannot fathom the pain and horror of being the victim of [mean tweets]\"")
6/ Back when I was obsessed w/this I solicited emails from people in this world who were too scared to speak openly about it. My 'favorite' was nonwhite would-be authors being told by white privileged editors they needed to lean in to oppression. https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak
7/ In this instance, the agent literally told the aspiring author, who is a person of color, that it would be 'preferabl[e]' for them to write a character that was their own race. One might call this racism, mightn't one?? But they just openly said it!
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak-855
![7/ In this instance, the agent literally told the aspiring author, who is a person of color, that it would be 'preferabl[e]' for them to write a character that was their own race. One might call this racism, mightn't one?? But they just openly said it! https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak-855](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoPmFbrXUAAP5rx.jpg "7/ In this instance, the agent literally told the aspiring author, who is a person of color, that it would be 'preferabl[e]' for them to write a character that was their own race. One might call this racism, mightn't one?? But they just openly said it! https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak-855")
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak-855
8/ Here's the rant in question by the way so you can judge for yourself https://twitter.com/SaJaH_ofArden/status/1333824900201664512
9/ It's. A. Cult.
It is not fair to subject the rest of us in creative fields to this. We never agreed.
It is not fair to subject the rest of us in creative fields to this. We never agreed.
10/ "Virulently harmed."
Either these people are genuinely unwell -- you cannot be well if you think one person making fun of another person "virulently harms" others by some sort of process of racial osmosis -- or they just intentionally inflate harm claims (that is, lie).
Either these people are genuinely unwell -- you cannot be well if you think one person making fun of another person "virulently harms" others by some sort of process of racial osmosis -- or they just intentionally inflate harm claims (that is, lie).
11/ I harp on this because when these viewpoints infect a community, as they have started to in journalism -- see Matt Yglesias accused of rendering a colleague 'unsafe' over a matter of agreement -- everything becomes completely dysfunctional.
Not everything is violence.
Not everything is violence.
12/ Okay, no more tweets on this! Tune in to the next episode of @TheBARPod, for there shall be a segment discussing this and the broader insanity of YA Twitter, which is (improbably) one of the most toxic communities on this hellsite.
