We just received word that the attack on Sharon is still ongoing. As usual, after the first few comments were left by people supporting Sharon, the bullies, doing what they do best, moved in and hijacked Sharon’s post.
It has been kicking off on Sharon Desruisseaux GR blog the last two days. STGRB gave great advice when you say don’t reply to the trolls. I tried to encourage Sharon not to reply to them, but they were coming on in droves and drawing Sharon etc. into a fight! Thankfully Sharon has now said that she is going to ignore them from now on.
These trolls spread so much poison, they will do anything to draw people into a fight. The only way to deal with them is to ignore them, it takes two people to argue. Its best to leave them to argue with themselves!
Thanks for all your wonderful advice! In the past I would have been in there fighting back, but now I see that only makes things much worse.
Omg! These trolls really need to get a life! They’ve swarmed in on Sharon’s blogs and are up to their usual nonsense again.
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/3574046-stay-strong-fellow-writers-stay-strong
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/3589527-one-little-light-in-a-sea-of-darknessHere’s another good one by Sharon:
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/3594137-reallyShe’s starting to get it:
When you feed them ANYTHING-they twist it against you and their game is won by damaging a person’s reputation and deflating them. This needs to stop. It is just not right in hurting anyone to the point where they can no longer write or go on this site.
We’re not going to bother with screenshots on this one. If you want to go to the links, waste a good few minutes of your life, and read the bullies’ verbal diarrhea for yourself, you’re welcome to. It’s their usual MO. Attacking and baiting Sharon and her friends, twisting their words around, dragging them down into the muck, lying, telling her that our site is evil, that we did this and that, that we’re this and that, etc. etc. Their usual lies with nothing to back it up. It got to the point where Sharon just pulled out of the convo altogether to go work on her book. And we think that was a good move.
Sharon, if you’re reading our site, the best thing to do with the bullies is to completely ignore them. Have NOTHING to do with them. Please take a look at our Do’s and Don’t's For Victims page. If you want to know who they all are, read our BBG page. All these people are trying to do is drag you down into their black hole of ugly. They are bitter, angry people who thrive on negativity and hatred. We recommend deleting their comments and blocking them. Don’t know how to block? Well, just in case you don’t, if you go to their profile page and scroll down to the bottom, you’ll see a blocking link on the left hand side. We know by watching what the bullies have done to others that this is absolutely the best way to deal with them. Good luck!
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An addendum. Finally, someone who’s not afraid to tell the truth on GR:
Well said, Gillian. You rock!
If there are authors out there who are attacking reviewers the way the bullies attack others, we have yet to see it. If someone wants to give us a concrete example of this, with screenshots, we’ll publish it.
This comment was posted by “Rose.” Message number 182 on Sharon’s blog on GR:
QUOTE: – - “Personally, my argument against Sharon is that she’s blindly supporting a website (StoptheGRBullies) that’s been responsible for posting the personal information and threatening/harasssing reviewers and people who support them, including authors who support those reviewers. They’ve made racist, sexist, misogynistic, ableist insults among other commentary upon their website in the past, and they’re still doing it to this day.” — END OF QUOTE
I’d love to see one shred of proof of all this! Rose and her gang are nasty nut-jobs!
Off topic but I thought you’d be interested in this:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/any-publicity-is-good-ask-the-michael-jackson-attack-squad-20130121-2d2kb.html
It talks about Amazon reviews becoming attack weapons. I thought it was related to your site in that STGRB has addressed this issue in the past.
This article actually first appeared in the NYT, where it’s received almost two hundred comments. Check them out: it really looks like Amazon reviews are losing credibility, and not because of ‘badly behaving authors’ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/business/a-casualty-on-the-battlefield-of-amazons-partisan-book-reviews.html?_r=0
Uh… wow! Thank you two for sharing this! This is really really interesting. You’re right, Goronwy, it isn’t because of BBA, is it? I think we will be blogging about this, too. I’ll have to clear it through Athena and then when I get some time, see what the others think. We’ll publish our thoughts on it hopefully soon.
It doesn’t matter what Sharon says because the trolls will totally twist her words and turn what she is saying into something entirely different.
The trolls are like a dog with a bone, they keep poking and prodding. They are trying to get a raise out of Sharon so then they can say “NOW LOOK! There you see that?! Author behaving Badly!!! Na-na-na!!!”
They are trying every trick in the book to get a rise out of Sharon, but Sharon is a true lady so she doesn’t take the bait! Fair play to you Sharon!
There are two things that a newly published writer should probably concentrate on: (1) writing the next book (if they’ve got another book in them), and (2) finding their readership. Talking to these fight-pickers and crap-flingers and would-be witch-burners on Goodreads and the Amazon forums clearly doesn’t help with either task. It sounds like Sharon Desruisseaux might have come to a similar conclusion.
Well said, Karig!
Aw! You posted my GR comment!
I’m flattered, thank-you! It is the truth anyway! The bullies spread all these rumors about STGRB yet they never have any proof. Normally they love showing screen shots, so where are the screen shots to prove their rumors?
My advice to people is to have a read through every inch of the STGRB site and see for yourself, the rumors are lies.
Thanks, Gill! Yep, you’re right. They bully people into not reading our site because they don’t want people to know the truth.
….”If there are authors out there who are attacking reviewers the way the bullies attack others, we have yet to see it. If someone wants to give us a concrete example of this, with screenshots, we’ll publish it…..”
Don’t hold your breath, because there isn’t any.
Hang in there Sharon!
Yeah that’s like comparing apples to oranges. Most authors I’ve seen respond to reviews that target the author or leave bad reviews that have nothing to do with the book. Even the few authors that are out of line typically end it there and remove the comments. Big deal. We all make a mistake.
These drama queens flock in and gang up on the author backing each other up. They then on top of that leave negative reviews, ratings, and shelving. They then post them on threads announcing them and warning others of them. They go WAY overboard. Then they can’t quit figure out why we don’t get upset over what they said. ROFL. Easy answer, authors don’t blow it out of control and take it to the next level and beyond like they do. Authors don’t call in 10 of their author friends to back them up like they do. Authors don’t go out of their way to hurt their business or career like they do.
It would be no different than me calling their employer leaving a bad review of them based on their online behavior. They just can’t get it.
M.T. Dismuke, I once challenged a blow-hard e-bully concerning his/her alleged “right” to boycott authors and deprive them of potential livelihood because their words/behaviors beyond the book offended others.
I asked the e-bully to reveal its true name and place of employment, explaining I did not feel right about supporting any business who compensated people harboring these types of beliefs.
Naturally, the e-bully lacked the courage and moral fortitude to respond.
That’s actually so typical. The main reason these people bully online is because they couldn’t get away with this in the real world where there are laws. If the Internet were held to the same standards we have to abide in daily everyday life, this wouldn’t be happening and freedom of speech would be executed in a very different manner. Of course Looney would wind up either in prison or the mental hospital. But most others would abide simply because they wouldn’t have a choice.
It’s called being civilized. The problem is that these bullies recognize the fact that they can, and do, get away with so much online and nothing can happen to them. Or at least nothing has happened to them in the past. I see changes coming, though. The Internet is not going to be the free-for-all it has been, and that has nothing to do with freedom of speech and all to do with being civil and knowing how to execute an argument without ranting, screaming, cursing and calling names that might hurt someone’s reputation and ruin their chances of getting an income.
The attack on Sharon’s blog is still going strong. I was glad to see that a few people, including non-authors, have come to her defense. I know that in general it’s better to just ignore the bullies but it’s about time people started standing up to them. I’m tired of seeing authors take down their blogs or make them private because they can’t take the attacks any more. These people can’t keep going and doing whatever and wherever they please even while they presume to tell everybody else what they can and cannot do and where they can do it. Fight back, authors! Take back your blogs!
These people can’t keep going and doing whatever and wherever they please even while they presume to tell everybody else what they can and cannot do and where they can do it.
Agreed!
Off topic – but STGRB and I have the same stalker and her name is GenX. LOL She is posting about me now. (I think she likes me) Hehe
Funny, I never heard of this GenX before until she emailed me. Now she can’t get enough of me. Well, I do have that effect on girls I suppose. Maybe she is wanting me to write about her on my blog. Sorry Gen, you’re just not that interesting nor do you pose any kind of threat to me so …. you’re just gonna have to keep your little girl crush confined to STGRB. LOL
She and her goons still insist that I have said racial slurs, and of course, they don’t have any screenshots of this or links.
They say I degrade women. And of course, they have no screenshots or links of this.
And you know that if they did, they would be posting them all over the net.
I just can’t get over how they all say so much about STGRB, myself and all these other authors and yet, they still can’t supply screenshots or links to support any of their claims.
@ Goronwy – I saw that too. Sharon strikes me as a very lovely lady. I think the more these bullies attack, the more they are making themselves out to be the bullies that they are. They are hurting their own cause by going from author to author and attacking them. And with each attack, they are proving STGRB right.
Hi Carroll!
If you wrote something even slightly racist or sexist on the internet the trolls would be all over it! They would take a screen shot there and then! They are so full of crap! Their made up stories are getting more and more outrageous .
People are getting wise to the bullies, people will read your blog and STGRB and they will see for themselves that the rumors are lies. People will also see all of the proof on STGRB that shows exactly who the bullies are. Any normal person who reads all the hate that the bullies and trolls spread will clearly see them for what they are! The bullies do more damage to themselves then STGRB could ever do to them.
GenX is an idiot.
Sharon hasn’t blocked them or deleted their comments and in a way, that’s good. Because it is showing others how obsessed and crazy these people are.
I wanted to show you this video. I know a lot of people don’t have time to watch this stuff, but I think it’s very interesting and may give a logical and understandable reason why “bullies” of all kinds react the way they do. This is a scientific documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbh5l0b2-0o
I am sure at some point, it may seem useless, but watch at least a third of it. I think the revolutions about how and why the human mind reacts to negativity, disagreements, and even engages in pack mentality is enlightening.
This video also explains why it is NORMAL for a person to feel threatened when their work is demeaned. It’s a really neat video. But then I like this sort of thing and prefer it over TV.
Wow, that’s pretty cool. Explains a lot.
Hi everyone! We have some new posts coming up that will be especially entertaining. We just haven’t had time to get to them yet. All of us have been uber busy. Should be soon, though.