Call the CDC – there’s a viral case of the stupids running amok.

There are way too many stupid people on the Interwebz today. Either that, or Mercury going direct again has warped everyone.

Apparently, someone tasered book- and romland this week, because there’s a pretty rampant viral case of the stupids making the rounds. (And my day started out shitty enough as it was by learning first thing Christopher Lee died. And seriously, if your only reference for his enormous canon of work as an actor is Saruman, please don’t speak to me yet until I’ve had waaaaay more coffee. You have been warned.)

The Dylan Saccoccio BBA flameout over a not-so-bad one-star review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1299877698

There was the TOR/Irene Gallo fiasco.

Reddit has cracked down on abuse, which is making (predictably) abusers lose their shit and scream Hitler.

Now there’s a publisher who apparently doesn’t realize that, yes, some reviewers ACTUALLY BUY THEIR OWN BOOKS and not only commits the heinous sin of going after a review, but basically insinuating that the reviewer must have pirated the book * gotten the book in some hinky fashion, because the publisher didn’t send them a free copy. (No, I cannot make this shit up.) Yes, I’m giving YOU serious side-eye, Loose Id. Because, yes, you did basically make that insinuation, no matter how you worded it. Dicks.  (FYI, prefacing a comment with “there’s no accusation here” means yes, it is basically an accusation. Otherwise, the disclaimer wouldn’t be necessary.)  http://smbookobsessions.com/im-like-why-are-you-so-obsessed-with-me/

* I edited the original wording because, yes, piracy accusations are pretty strong, But still, there IS an accusation there, or they wouldn’t have had to add a disclaimer to it.

Then The Mary Sue featured a guest article by someone who apparently hasn’t read a romance novel in the past twenty to thirty years. (So much painfully wrong stupid in this article that I can’t even begin to parse it.) http://www.themarysue.com/tropes-of-love/ (And as @mostlybree put it so well on Twitter, we are constantly defending SFF and yet no one in that genre, it seems, comes to the defense of romance. So fuck you, The Mary Sue.)

EDIT: Heidi Cullinan did a fantastic job of parsing and responding to this, including citations to prove her statements.

Folks…stop. Just fucking stop. Get your heads out of your asses and fucking stop it, okay? You’re embarrassing yourselves.

Publishers, you should KNOW better than to get involved in review spats. And, duh, people BUY BOOKS AND REVIEW THEM. Are you going to start asking every reviewer on Goodreads if they bought their copy of the book directly from your online store and demand receipts? I fucking hope not.

And The Mary Sue. Really? REALLY? Seriously. Who in all fuckballs thought running that article was a remotely good idea? And, oh yeah, fuck you. Romance authors are always helping defend the validity of other genres, fighting for inclusion, and you throw us under the fucking train and spit on us in the process.

Fuck you.

Just fuck. You.

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