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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Meh, I suspect most people would come off badly if a court publicized your inner friend or work chats. I just read the NYT article & timeline, and don’t have patience for the prior 20 pages, so this might be repetitive. Dorkand is clearly a thirst trap. True altruism would be anonymously donating, not publicizing it. She’s also a wannabe, not a real writer, which probably doubles down on the annoyance factor, but I think most writers in the “serious fiction/writers workshop” genre probably are “inspired” by people like her. It definitely smacks of mean girls, but frankly, a lot of life is like that. It definitely seems like if Dorland had let it go, Larson wouldn’t have sued; it became a race to the courthouse bc she’s slightly obsessed.

From a big picture view, while the group texts were mean, I would guess they were also a response to the legal attack. It reminds me of the lawsuits in music, where people sue for money based on 2-3 notes. There’s a fuzzy line between artistic inspiration and plagiarism; Larson definitely landed on the wrong side in the beginning but I also wonder if you post on social media, do you lose an expectation of privacy? The question being, if she changed the text, why does it matter? Dorland is obviously hurt bc she thought Larson was a friend (clearly not), she didn’t realize she wasn’t a particularly good writer, and she wanted accolades for her “generous” donation. Personally, I felt like the writer Twitter attack of the college student was more repugnant because they were punching under their weight. If Dorland hadn’t been so litigious, she never would have seen private conversations - it’s like opening Pandora’s box.[/quote]

1) I don't actually think most people would come off this badly if a court publicized your work or friend chats. Maybe you would. Some of the people who come off the worst in those chats are the people around Larson who barely even knew Dorland but engaged in really harsh, gossipy chat about her. That's actually not a "most people" thing. I might gossip on a group text but not about people I barely know. And I certainly wouldn't say anything as negative and angry as what Celeste Ng and some of these other folks said -- I simply do not have that level of hate for anyone who hasn't personally hurt me. That level of cattiness is specific to catty, gossipy people. Not everyone.

2) I'm in the "serious fiction/writers workshop" genre and I could imagine being inspired by someone like Dorland, and by something like her kidney donation and the way she chose to talk about it online. But I still wouldn't just steal her letter from a private Facebook group (especially since she's also a writer and would obviously be proprietary about it, but also just because -- yuck, don't do that). I've written stories based on bad experiences with people I hate. But the difference is that my stories are based on direct experiences, not stuff they wrote on Facebook. And since I'm a creative writer, I changed all the details and took the stories in a different direction. I'm not a memoirist.

3) Dorland didn't sue any of those people except Larson, and only after Larson sued her first. So the texts weren't in response to the "legal attack." They just didn't like her. They never did. That's why Larson stuck around in Dorland's private Facebook group mining it for content, that's why she wrote the story in the first place. She hated Dorland and wanted to channel that hatred somewhere. And she wanted Dorland to know she hated her, and why, which is why her first draft of the story didn't even change her name or the any of the text of the letter.

Sorry, but this is just a group of petty mean girls ganging up on someone they don't like. Whether I like the person or not is irrelevant. I dislike many people. I don't treat them like this because I'm not an insecure hack who has to tear down others in order to feel good about myself. Imagine being Celeste Ng, having multiple best selling novels and a deal with Hulu, and wasting time and energy hating some unpublished writing teacher on the other side of the country because she [checks notes] donated a kidney to a stranger? Sorry, but no. These people are vile.[/quote]

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