Well, well, well. It looks like little Miss Kat Kennedy managed to get over her bout of drama sickness. After six months of remaining fairly silent in the bully community (no surprise there), Kat has all the sudden broken her silence and written about the whole affair regarding the bully attack on Sharon Desruisseaux. Couldn’t stay away from drama for long, could she?
In her post, Kat publishes Sharon’s words from her post, One Little Light in a Sea of Darkness and then proceeds to tell Sharon the “facts”. *snort*
Facts? Right. Let’s go over those “facts”.
So, Kat, you think the bullies have better things to do with their time than to hate on authors and books for fun? Really?
Wrong.
You see this kind of thing happen on Dear Author ALL THE TIME. In fact, let’s all take a look at this review. It’s a review (written by January Jane) of Spoils of War by Phoenix Sullivan, an independent author. When you read it along with the comments that follow, you see that not only do the bullies do this for fun, they do it so they will get a rise out of an author and start a bully attack just so they can label the author BBA. We call it the Catch on our Bully MO page. It’s another way they bait authors. They relish in this kind of thing. Here’s a screenshot of one of the commenters saying that she contacted the author to solicit her response:
Here’s another saying she wants to leave a one-star review on Amazon (without reading the book and without even writing an actual review) and just link to Jane’s review on Dear Author:
At the end of the review, Jane says that she wanted to give the book “a better grade lest all the January reviews seem like endless hate.”
Right. She wanted to give the book a better grade and then states how she would also like to give the book less than an F. Not a contradictory statement at all.
Now, getting back to Kat and her uh… “facts”, why is it easy to believe that these people are bored haters who like to hate on authors and books for fun? The answer is simple. Because it’s true.
Fact #2:
We agree, an honest opinion of a BOOK isn’t bullying. But a dishonest review to get revenge on an author, or a review that bashes the author, or even worse, a review made with the intention of baiting an author into a fight IS bullying. And the bullies do these kinds of things all the time. We’ve shown proof of this on our blog and we will continue to show proof of it.
Fact 3#:
Yeah, that’s right, Kat. You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. We weren’t the ones who made complete asses of ourselves during the GR Bully Meltdown. That was you and your band of cronies, remember? No wonder you’ve been silent for months.
No one takes us seriously, huh? Only organizations like The Huffington Post, USA Today and Forbes, but really, they’re nobodies. Right?
Fact #4:
What Kat fails to mention is that this author, at that time, believed Lucy’s lie, as many people did. Once we pointed to the fact that Lucy never took the number to the police to have them investigate it and that there was no one who could corroborate her story (as Andrew Losowsky, the books editor of The Huffington Post noted), then people started to see the truth. Why didn’t Lucy go to the police and why wasn’t there anyone to corroborate her story? The answer is simple. Because no one called her. She was lying. After this, Athena contacted the author in question and found out that she had started writing again. So, nice try, Kat, but you fail.
Now, overall, we don’t have a problem with the way people treat books. We have a problem with the way people treat other PEOPLE. This is something that the bullies never seem to understand. We don’t care what Sharon originally wrote on her blog about a particular review of one of her books and as we see it, she has a right to write what she wants without being harassed for it. It’s her blog. Our beef is with what the bullies are doing to her personally. The whole BBA mentality. Name calling. The boycotting. The harassing. All this childish bullshit for which they are famous. Our beef is with them coming into her space and harassing her for an opinion or an emotion she wanted to express ON HER OWN BLOG. After all, isn’t everyone allowed freedom of speech? This is the same thing that happened to Claude Bouchard and Lynne Copeland (posts to come) and it’s crap. This constant bashing and bullying of other people is a growing problem on the internet and it’s something we would never try to justify with words like this:
This is what Kat writes at the end of her post. The world is a harsh place and people are cruel. Deal with it. This is how Kat justifies bullying. It’s funny – it’s always the people who are cruel to others who try to justify their behavior with this statement.
Okay, Kat, so the world is harsh and we just need to deal with it, right? So, should Charles Manson have gotten up in front of the court and said: “Hey, the world is harsh and people are cruel. So am I. You all just need to deal with it.” Or how about all those children who are abused? Should we just tell them that the world is a harsh place and they just need to deal? How about when they grow up and raid their grandfather’s arsenal so they can go to school and blow away their classmates? Should we justify that by saying that people are cruel and the world is harsh and we just need to move on?
Sorry, Kat, but once again, you fail. You want to justify your behavior by saying the world is harsh and people are cruel and that we just need to deal with it? Well, guess what. We call bullshit. Only people who want to justify abuse say that. The world is what you make it. Period.
And you can say all you want about our blog. It doesn’t make it true. And it doesn’t change the fact that you’re as big a bully now as you were six months ago. The only thing that’s different now is that everyone knows it.
Sociopathic was the first thing that came to mind when I read this post. Online at least, Kat seems to lack any insight or empathy. I wonder if she is the same in the real world.
Profile of the sociopath: http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
Very insightful. According to statistics, something like one in 10 people is a sociopath, devoid of conscience. They hide their true selves better in real life, but within the anonymity of the Internet, they feel comfortable showing all their ugly, heartless colors. I truly believe most of these GR Bullies don’t have an ounce of remorse for the damage they cause, which is one of the marks of a sociopath. You can see it time and again with these individuals: when their victims ask them to stop, they continue their harm without conscience.
I’m very glad this site exists as a place for victims of these sociopaths to go.
I absolutely loved this post. Love your site. Love how you’re not afraid to call out the truth, no matter how much the bullies try to smear it.
The fact that Kat Kennedy doesn’t concede that these types of bully reviews and campaigns to harm an author’s career *can* and *do* actually happen just completed negated her argument. To form a rational argument that is to be taken seriously by anyone, all sides of the argument must be given due credence. This site doesn’t just exist in a vacuum. It exists for a reason. To say these types of bullying events don’t occur and are only the product of a few whiney author’s imaginations says more about Kat Kennedy than anything else. I.e. why is she so determined to defend and justify rampant Internet bullying behavior without admitting that it could, in fact, actually exist in some (or many) instances? Could it be because Kat Kennedy is actually of the most active perpetrators of it herself?
Yup, that’s what I think, too.
If they weren’t really doing these things, there would be nothing to defend against. We wouldn’t have piles of evidence laying around here for them to ignore and refute (all at the same time!)
I’ll say one thing for Kat and her fellow travelers — they provide a particularly rich vein of material for any writer looking for ways to make their villains particularly hate-worthy, particularly if those villains regularly look for an innocent stranger to pick a fight with, pretend that something the stranger said or did was vastly more reprehensible than it really was, wage a slander campaign against the stranger, claim that the stranger is being a crybaby when he complains, and justify everything they do by saying that the world is a cruel place and that life isn’t fair and that anybody who expects people to show a little bleeping empathy is a “speshul snowflake” who deserves to be treated even more harshly than before.
Yes, if you’re a writer and you want your protagonist to have to face off against a real hyena of a person, you can’t go too far wrong if you have your antagonist do what Kat and Ridley and the rest of the raging baboons do. (Hey, it’s a lot more likely to help you gain success as a writer than wrestling with the pigs on Goodreads or Dear Author or some other online pigsty.)
ROTFLMAO! Well said.
LOL, very funny post, and very well said!
Dear Kat:
Per you: “Fact #1: People aren’t bored enough to hate on your book for fun. It’s nice to imagine those negative reviews are just from biased haters. But this is a pipe dream that benefits no one.”
I disagree. I suspect bordeom coupled with emotional and/or mental illness and disruptive, dysfunctional behavior patterns have EVERYTHING TO DO with bully reviewing. Bully reviewers are not reviewing books, partially or impartially, professionally or unprofessionally. Bully reviewers are indeed hating on books AND ON AUTHORS for fun, entertainment, stimulation, whatever you want to call it.
You already know this and that’s why you’re not acknowledging it. You’re pretending it’s all about authors fussing over hard words about their books. Come on, woman, drink up some courage and just own your own perversity. Just suck it up and say it. You and your groupies bully and harrass authors because you NEED to do it in order to feel like you’re not a bunch of worthless, empty losers.
That is why you lie, misrespresent, exaggerate, and persecute. It’s not about what a book is (or isn’t). It’s not about what an author is (or isn’t.) It’s about your own personal failings. If you had productive, meaningful lives you would not jump off the deep end any time an author says, does, or writes something you don’t like.
Per Kat: ” Fact #2: Public opinion is cruel. Arguing against it and requesting every random reviewer be kind and take your emotional state/kindness into consideration is like Caligula waging war against the ocean – crazy and impossible. People will review how they honestly feel. This isn’t bullying, this is opinion because they are consumers and you are the pusher of a product.”
You need to stop demanding respect as a consumer and learn how to show some. You’d do well to understand that a merchant or an establishment has the right to refuse service to consumers perceived to be entertaining unreasonable expectations. If you were a waitress and patrons at a table treated you abusively, you’d have the right to refuse them service and the management has the right to insist the abusive patrons leave. Have you ever been a waitress or anything else useful or meaningful? Do you comprehend that business relationships are a two-way street?
People will review how they honestly feel and when they post their honestly felt reviews in venues open to the public, the public will also review them how they honestly feel. So consider your audience. If you don’t wish to be perceived as an over-the-hill, middle-aged, psychologically unstable hag, do your best not to sound like one.
If you sound like a fool, I’m going to say you sound like a fool.
If you post inaccurate information about a book I’ve read, I’m going to say you’re lying about the book.
If you post narcissistic drivel all about your feelings about a book or an author or a reviewer, I’m not going to waste my time reading said drivel.
It’s simple, and it’s fair. See where I’m going with this?
Per Kat: “Fact 3: If you support STGRB then no one will take you seriously. Ever.”
I agree you probably know all about what no one takes seriously. You ARE no one. You are a source of free, low-quality entertainment, and anybody aware of the big picture won’t take you seriously right now.
Just how terrified of STGRB are you, anyway? If you can’t persuade your victims you have the right to abuse them with impunity, you resort to threats against a blog who objects to your offensive behaviors? Listen, Kat, just show up at my front door talking the same smack. Look me in the eye and say it. Until then, your on-line threats are BS. You don’t have the clout or the credibility to back it up and you sure don’t have the nerve.
“Per Kat: Fact 4: The author you’re referring to, that quit writing, did not quit writing because of Goodreads. This it her blogpost on why she quit writing so that you can see why she really quit and why even she doesn’t support STRBG:”
Kat, enough with the showmanship and deflections. Tell me and the rest of the curious public why you and people like you demand the right to abuse, harrass, threaten, and lie about others in a public venue without being targeted for criticism and censure by informed individuals who disapprove of you.
Just come out and offer your explanation. I’m a fair person, I’ll consider anything you have to say for yourself that is actually relevant to the issue. But don’t hide behind the BS screen.