Bad Art Friend
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Anonymous
I don’t agree for a few reasons but the main one is that I feel like “both sides erred” as the de facto wise-owl take in all situations is a terribly destructive setting, and it’s IMO a coward’s perch. Not intending that as ad hominem against any particular poster; this is a default social setting that I vehemently disagree with. It lets a lot of abusive behavior escape any form of accountability because the critical eye will make distinctions that get washed away with both sides rationalizations. Part of me wants Dorland not to mediate, which I know might be financial suicidal, because it will render this nightmare and plagiarism and workplace harassment a nullity to too many, and the thought gives me anguish. Yes, I know how that sounds. |
Anonymous
I don't disagree with you on the grave moral weakness of this fallacy of "both sides" which is devastating discourse around the country (see Holocaust deniers in TX). But that specific poster is still reading and learning. I would give her(?) a chance. Personally, I want Dorland to file an employment case against GrubStreet, if she still can. At a minimum, I hope she writes her story. |
Anonymous
-1 |
Anonymous
Give this PP a chance, she is still coming up to speed. She has only read the grossly misogynist NYT article. |
Anonymous
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I am on page 68 now. Taking notes as I go:
Larson/Ng dynamic devolved because of groupthink - sounds like they started out gossiping about her look-at-me drama and then the book, but then when Dawn started pursuing Sonya legally and/or trying to cancel her, it got meaner with Ng being the mean girl ring leader. However, there has to be some more backstory we aren't getting about why Dawn made them so spiteful in the first place. The code switching discussion is actually really interesting and I can see that as a reason for Dawn not able to fit in. However, everyone is assuming that none of the Chunky Monkeys or Grub Street people had similar outcast-type or poor backgrounds. They could possibly have had similar backgrounds with similar trauma but they don’t feel the need to bring it up like she does as excuse for everything that has happened in her adult life, or make it the defining issue as she does. I think the blue check marks confused the FICTIONAL account of Rose with the person of Dawn when they went down the white woman savior path during the twitter pile-on. NYT looks bad. It was poor reporting. Nobody looks good here accept the few people who have dispassionately put things in a timeline order. |
Anonymous
Somebody certainly doesn’t look good from the description above. |
Anonymous
I agree with you strenuously about the dangers of “both sides” Here (I’m not the new poster and have followed the saga extensively but not participated a lot here) I am quite pro dorland. I think grubstreet leadership should be hanging their heads in embarrassed shame, that the chunky monkeys are a mean girls clique (maybe an exception for Calvin), and Larson herself is an unethical writer who’s refusal to admit that she was a bad friend and made an illegal and lazy artistic choice will likely end any chances of larger mainstream success. And Celeste Ng needs to do a lot of self reflection. I have zero criticism for Dawn’s actions surrounding and related to her kidney donation and subsequent advocacy. I do however disagree with posters who say that after this article that they believe anyone who ends up with a similar reputation is likely being “framed.” Dawn ended up where she is because she was a fringe member of a social group and one prominent member of that group wronged her and did not want to accept that culpability so the rest of the group rallied around the prominent figure to soothe her ego and in the process fully convinced themselves it was justified in order to not feel guilty themselves. People will rationalize a lot to not feel guilty. So they all helped Sonya feel less guilty and wiped away their own sins in the process. It was a no brained because Sonya was the inner circle. I have seen this happen in groups, especially groups of women, a lot. That said, I also have had a friend that is like the type of person Kolker tries to paint, and I don’t dislike her because of misogyny. She and I became friends because she was the subject of bullying and I spoke out for her, publicly, in an all girls school. We were friends for decades. She is not a 100% bad person and I could so see her retroactively portrayed the way Dawn is in a situation like this and I have had trouble reading all through this and retaining my unbiased opinion of Dawn because of this friend. This friend is someone who, after a long long time of knowing her, you see that she is a very selfish and insecure person who is constantly positioning herself to be a victim. Of something. And once she has decided she is a victim of whatever she then is hyper focused on it, talks about it absolutely non stop (for years, she will rehash wrongs for literal years) and claim to be deeply traumatized by the people who hurt her. And the first, second, third times this happens, you believe her and hug her and hear her feelings, even if you think perhaps whatever it is that happened is being a bit overblown. But eventually, when you’ve known someone like this for a long time and you have been through the cycle with them a few times, you find yourself repulsed by them. All the sympathy and pity and love curdles when it goes unreciprocated for so long, when the genuine nature of the complaints begins to sour, when you see that she /he is sucking you into the same pattern again and again to validate their latest obsession. Anyway, I’m not sure Dawn is this person, I’m also not entirely sure she’s not a similar flavor though. It doesn’t change the fact that this group of people were unprofessional and cruel and that she didn’t deserve this. But just as it is misogynistic to label certain female traits like sticking up for yourself and sticking to your guns as bad, it’s also wrong to deny people the true feeling they have when they feel like they know the person Kolker is describing. And just like Dawn’s “gut feeling” that something was off is really hard to ‘prove’ in the moment. It is similarly difficult to ‘prove’ this type of friend is extremely toxix. |
Anonymous
Regarding the bolded: 1) You’d think so! And yet no one articulates it, ever. I kept waiting for this too, but it never shows up. But more importantly, 2) It doesn’t actually matter. If someone has a grating personality at your job, or in a professional/social circle you are in, you can avoid them, stay polite but distant when you see them, shrug and say “Oh I don’t know her that well” when their name comes up. If you really hate them and it is necessary in order to avoid, say, being stuck on the same assignment or rooming with them at a conference, you discretely tell whoever you need to that you don’t mesh well with this person, and request a transfer or whatever. You don’t spend years trashing them to colleagues and mutual friends, while pretending to their face that you still like them. You don’t ignore them en masse at a professional conference they paid to attend. And you definitely don’t steal a private post from their social media and base a racist, unlikable, two-dimensional character off them in a story you plan to submit to multiple publications and a high profile citywide festival. Yes, some people are annoying. But unless Dorland actually DID something to these people, their response (and I’m talking about all the stuff that happened before Dorland did a single thing that could actually be considered problematic) is unprofessional, bullying, unethical, and just plain mean. You don’t have to like everyone. But you do have to treat them with a baseline level of respect. And if you don’t, my feeling is you get what’s coming to you. |
Anonymous
This whole thing has me thinking that too. Books written by, or targeted to, American women are particularly uninteresting to me. The all seem to revolve around these group dynamic female relationships that are utterly foreign to me, and don’t resonate, or there is a lot of backstabbing and cattiness that I find just irritating. When you think back over the course of the last several centuries, how many of the great writers can you see hanging out in these sort of groups, saying “Gah!” repeatedly on group texts? Not many, I suspect. Most great artists were weird loners who had insight into the human condition because they were often outsiders looking in. Are we losing those voices now? If you are a weird loner who has been scared away by the literary bullies, please don’t give up! I’m waiting for your book! |
Anonymous
| You're trying to tell me that Dawn posting about her kidney donation and advocating for live organ donations on Facebook is somehow *more attention-seeking* or narcissistic or whatever-have-you than writers shamelessly publicizing their books, tweeting about their good deeds, hawking their writing, etc.? Let whoever among us who have never posted a humblebrag or something feel-good or anything remotely attention-seeking on social media throw the first stone. I feel like I'm talking to aliens. |
Anonymous
100%. And I'm not seeing ANY evidence that Dawn was actually that annoying to begin with. It all feels a lot like people just projecting. I would rather take an aloof, do-gooder, overly "sunny" person over a duplicitous, fake, back-stabbing friend any day of the week. |
Anonymous
THIS to me. But using someone else’s story for revenge is ugly. |
Anonymous
Definitely not. I wouldn't have said that 2 weeks ago. Not going to listen. |
Anonymous
Glad my friends aren't relatable in any way to mean girl Sonya Larson and her toxic group text from hell. |
Anonymous
+1 I can’t stand people who just sit around trashing people they barely know for fun. This is a mark of very dull, petty people. The amazing thing about those chats is how rarely any of those people have anything insightful to say. They’re all just “rahrah Sonya, Dawn sucks!” And when anyone says even the mildest nuanced take on the situation, they shut it down. Seems boring af. |