There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Toad and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet. Okay, So Mike, I desperately need to talk about what's going on with the Goodreads review bombing story. Honestly, this is like probably one of the more wild stories I've heard in a very long time. And if I'm saying that somebody who covers weird, wild stories on the Internet, if I'm saying this, you know it's truly wild.
We were going to do this in this week's news.
Roundup, but honestly, I had so much to say about it that I decided it needed to be its own thing. That's because it really involves a lot of stuff that I spend a ton of time thinking and talking about. First of all, book communities online. I don't know how tapped in you are to like online book communities like book Talk or books to Graham, but the drama is always very deep when it's online book drama. Like people who are voracious readers and connect about it on the Internet,
their drama is very deep. I consider myself part of that community, by the way, So this is I can say that because I'm one of them.
Okay, this is good context. I have. You often tell me about very intense internet drama, and it often involves book clubs. I didn't so I didn't realize that this was like a particularly common thing of book communities. But it makes sense.
Oh yeah, So that's part of why I'm so interested in this. But there's also issues of how platforms impact marginalized people, like a lot of issues mixed up with what it means to be a creative professional in this day and age, and how the internet experience has sort of complicated that, and also good old fashioned jealousy, something I know quite a bit about. So there's a lot going on here, so let's get into it. So this story really all starts with an author named Kate Corian.
She's an author who had a highly anticipated book coming out called The Crown of Starlight, which was meant to be out in May of twenty twenty four. I also read that she might have had like this book deal and then like a subscription box deal from this book, and then like maybe even like a film publishing deal on the table. So Kate is a writer who had a lot of positive things going on, like she was
really doing the damn thing very successful. But now Kate's book has been shelved after she admitted using Goodreads to review bomb a bunch of forthcoming books mostly by black, Asian and queer authors.
Kate is white.
It sounds like this had been going on for kind of a while and that it was something that the writing community was aware of and like knew what was happening, but was up until this point kind of hoping to deal with privately.
They knew that She's in particular was doing it, or just that it was like a general problem in their community.
Okay, so great question. I would say both. I think that writers knew that this specific writer, Kate, was doing this, and I think that writers were generally aware that good Reads and good Reads bombing, like like submitting tons and tons of bad reviews for a book even if you haven't read it, is an ongoing problem in the space. So I think I would say both if I had
to say so. The first time that this came on my radar was when Canadian author Saran jays Wow first tweeted about it, and that's when it really got more wide attention online. So they first noticed that Kate's book Crown of Starlight was getting good reviews from the same
accounts that were also trashing other books. Some of those books were not even out yet, so Zerin tweeted, if you, as a debut author, are going to make a bunch of fake goodbeats accounts one star bombing fellow debuts that you're threatened by, can you at least not make it so obvious by uploading your own book on a bajillion
different lists with those same accounts. So they then posted a thirty one page Google document, which we'll link to in the show notes of receipts screenshots showing the good Reads activity of a number of accounts with user names, including names like chantal b and O C. Young that they suspected were actually Kate leaving good reviews for her own book and bad reviews for other people's debut books.
So the books that she left bad reviews for were mostly written by people of color, including So Let Them Learn by Camilla Cole, which was meant to be released in January of next year, and To Gaze Upon Wicked Guds by Molly X Chang, whose book is actually being put out by the same publisher del Rey as Kate's book. So this is the same like trashing a fellow writer whose book is being published by the same company. Pretty bad, But.
It's also like not surprising at all, right that like this sort of petty jealousy would be happening within a single publishing house. I bet these women know each other, and have you been in the same circles for a while.
Notably, the authors of these books say that in some cases their books weren't even available yet, they hadn't been published, and in some cases they had not even sent out like advanced copies or galley So like, how could someone be reviewing it if there's like there's no way to actually read the book, it's not out yet, they have not sent out any kind of advanced copies. How is
someone leaving bad reviews already on Goodreads? Something else to note here is that these reviews are not just negative. In some cases, they're like down right mean. In one review, Kate writes, I can't believe Dell race but half a million dollars on this when they could have spent half a million dollars on anything else. Sorry, not sorry, Like that's not even that, that's just like a mean review.
You don't deserve the money that you were paid to write this book, and literally anything else would have been a better way to spend that money.
That it's not a.
Criticism of the book or the text, it is like just a mean insult.
Yeah, and it just drips with that same petty jealousy, like they could have spent it on anything else, like one of my books. Yes, that should have that money should have been my money.
Hold that thought because yes, a million times yet, and that's going to come up very soon. So we also need to talk about the fact that there is a very real, like identity aspect to this, like a very real racial aspect to this.
I want to come back to that in just a moment.
But some of the names that Kate chose are clearly meant to sell like they could belong to people of color. Names like oh Cee Young were some of the fake names that Kate used to leave me in reviews on other people's work. And then like using a fake name that is clearly meant to sound like it is the fake name of a person of color to trash authors of color while also praising her own work as a white woman.
Is like so diabolically like messed up.
That's just so, that's like there's layers to how fucked up that is so.
Using the fake name O. C.
Young Kate left this review on her own book, I love this book so much that I regret reading it because now nothing on my to be read sounds as interesting by comparison, So like, clearly that's not just hyping up her own book, it is a way to trash other authors of color in the process. Zal, that Canadian author who was the first person that I saw tweeting
about this, really summed it up. They say, there's something extra despicable about using clearly people of color names in fake accounts to upvote every negative review on people of color books, So the top ones are all one and
two star, like what in the Yellow Face. What's also funny about that is that if anybody has read the novel Yellow Face, which was probably one of my favorite novels of this year, it's like a plot point from that novel of a white writer being kind of like pretending to be a person of color because they are so jealous of writers of color. It's so interesting how this whole situation mirrors the plot line of a very popular novel that everybody should read it with the best
novel where I read this year. So this is already like a really awful messed up thing to have done. But when Kate was called out on it, rather than just messing up and coming clean and being like, yep, I did this, jealousy got the better of me. She made things so much worse by inventing a fake friend
to take the fall. So a bunch of these debut authors, including authors whose books were targeted by Kate, were all in a slack channel for debut writers, and of course they were discussing what happened and starting to suspect Kate. Meredith Mooring, who it sounds like was friends with Kate, told them all like, oh, listen, Kate did not do this. She could not have done this, and Kate has proof that she didn't do this. It was a friend of
hers who did this. Meredith told the writers in this debut writer slack channel, hold tight, Kate will pop in to explain. And eventually Kate does pop into this slack channel, explains she writes, I did not capital letters review bomb anyone.
I did not positively review.
My own book with false accounts, So basically this is Kate's explanation.
She says that somebody.
Named Lily in the Ray Low fandom community, which is a particularly like dedicated on online fan community that centers on the romantic relationship between two Star Wars characters, Ray and Kylo Wren. And she said that this person Lily, she had met this person through this like particularly dedicated online fan base, and that in this fan base, you like would she would like pick up people like this who were just like very very dedicated, and that that
was the person who was behind these reviews. This person Lily was just like a friend of hers, believed so much in her writing, wanted to make her writing a success, and that's why she was She was the one who was behind these reviews. Kate wrote in the slack channel.
This person is someone I knew from a time in Star Wars fandom, where I was a well known fan fiction author and a lightning rod for unhinged behavior, the type of behavior that anyone else who was well known in the fandom at the time still sees online.
I have no further details. I haven't heard anything else from them.
I never responded, so I gotta give a you know how we usually do like warnings when we're gonna talk about something that is like really bad on the podcast. I have to give a cringe alert for this because, oh my god, is it cringey.
So the proof in quotes that Kate shares that.
She didn't do this and that Lily did is these screenshots of faked back and forth conversations between Kate and Lily. Mike, are you down to do a dramatic reading of these conversations with me?
Yeah? Should I be Kate or should I be Lily?
You be Lily, I'll be Kate.
Okay. It seems like the reviews were positive, but I didn't do anything. Question Mark Reading books high is against the rules question mark no.
But making fake accounts to rate them high is. It's artificially inflating a book's reviews. That's against the rules.
Grimacing emoji. Oh, I didn't realize you could get in trouble. What please don't get mad. I made a couple accounts. I think that was me?
What?
Why?
The other night you were worrying that your book would get overshown by bigger books at your publisher. I wanted to help, so I made a couple accounts to rate your book high. I'm sorry. I really didn't think it would be a problem.
What the fuck Why I don't need fake reviews to help me?
Jesus Christ, I'm sorry. I really didn't think it would hurt exclamation point. I was trying to be nice.
Oh my god, I don't even know what to say.
I don't need you to step in and try to be nice with this. Do you have any idea how patronizing that is, how humiliating Svelden correctly, how much damage you could have done.
I'm gonna be sick, literally going to please tell.
Me that, for the love of God, you weren't actually stupid enough to use the same accounts that you made to boost me to bomb other people.
Well, I didn't think anyone would notice.
I'm literally going to be sick. I need to email my agent. This could literally cost me my fucking career. I don't even know what to say. This is such a violation of my trust and of our friendship.
I'm so so sorry, Kate, I'm really sorry. I didn't think it would hurt Booh, she.
Just types a bunch of letters like random letters.
How could it not hurt? Who the fuck did you go after.
It was just the books you said you were worried would bury yours on social media? Wicked gods and faint inked and blood.
You went after people in my imprint, in my debut group.
Do you have any.
Idea how much this could have cost me? I could lose my deal, I could lose everything all caps. If this is what Zarin was talking about, I'm going to kill you all day. I've been sitting here worried that someone was review bombing me, only to find out that I wasn't the victim of a review bombing campaign, but instead someone I trusted and considered a friend really thought I was so insecure and helpless that I needed you to fuck step in and level the playing field.
I'm so sorry. I didn't think people would think it was you. I tried to make the accounts look real.
I don't even know what to say. That somehow makes it even worse. Seriously, what the fuck, dude? I trusted you, I told you about stuff I was insecure about, and you literally turned right back around and pulled this shit. You understand that we're done here, right and scene? Oh my god?
So, first of all, I have.
To say it just sounds so fake, Like when you read it out loud, knowing this is a conversation between one person, like someone's faking a like someone is playing.
Both parts of this, it just sounds so fake.
There's like a long part of just straight exposition in there. I've been sitting here worried that someone was review bombing me, only to find out that I wasn't the victim of a review bombing campaign, but instead someone I trusted and considered a friend really thought I was so insecure, Like nobody taught.
Nobody explains, like conveniently explains what is happening in their life in such clear and explicit terms. It's like when you watch a movie and the main character is like, oh, well, a convenient explanation of what's going.
On in the plot, yeah, or like right when they've got James Bond captured and the villain is explaining his master plan.
So I cannot believe that this is what she published on the Slack channel to prove in heavy quotes that she was not the person behind this review bombing. And I really got to give it to the authors of color, some of who weren't even targeted, who just like cared about this enough to stay on it.
Who really stayed on Kate.
Even after she dropped this very compelling proof to get to the truth. So people were asking, like, can you show us earlier conversations between you and Lily so that we can actually verify this person exists? Like, very convenient.
That's the only conversations that you're able to show are conversations where you're talking about this specific incident and not any other conversations from somebody that you said that you've had an online friendship with that was so deep that they that it led them to do this.
Pretty weird, right.
Yeah, pretty weird. Pretty weak evidence.
Very weak evidence, Like, I honestly can't believe that she posted this.
She's a novelist, right, Like, yeah, she's supposed to make up stories that presumably sound plausible. Yeah.
It really.
Kind of makes you think, like, like, oh, maybe this is why she felt like she had to do this review bombing scheme because she didn't think she was going to be successful on her own. Maybe if this is the caliber of writing that she puts out, it's pretty weak writing.
Let's take a quick break at her back.
So after she released this proof, and writers were like, no, can you give us some more proof? She eventually did admit the truth that there was no Lily and that she was the one who had done the review bombing. Here is her apology slash explanation that she posted. Apology maybe is too strong. You tell me you be the judge,
she wrote. Since June twenty twenty two, I've been fighting a losing battle against depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse, the full scope of which I've hidden from everyone in my life out of shame and a misguided belief that with the right medicine and therapy I could beat it. In late November twenty twenty three, I started a new medication, and on December second, twenty twenty three, I suffered a
complete psychological breakdown. During this time, I created roughly six profiles on good Reads, and along with two profiles I made during a similar but shorter breakdown in twenty twenty two, I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged from kind of me to downright abusive. Two of those authors, Molly X. Chang and Danielle Jensen, are fellow del Rey authors. Camilla Cole and Bethany Baptiste just happened to be on
the wrong Goodreads list at the wrong time. I felt no ill will toward any of them. It was just my fear about how my book would be received, running out of control. My memories of this are extremely fuzzy, so it's possible there are a couple of other authors. If so, I take full ownership of what I did, and I as well. I'm sorrier that you'll ever know there's something I can say to erase what I did to you. When I was slapped on the wrist by Goodreads and vague tweeted by a handful of people, I
panicked that my secret was about to get out. Rather than taking responsibility for my actions, I tried to cover my tracks. Still in the middle of my breakdown, I made up the world's sloppiest chat with a non existent friend who was supposedly to blame, sent fake apologies for the action of said friend, which only made things worse. I betrayed the confidence of my agent, my pub team, my readers, my friends. I betrayed my own deeply held values.
I dragged one of my dearest friends and fellow debut authors into the mud with me. When she came to my defense, I'll leave her name out of this so as not to pull her in even deeper. However, if she wishes to come forward, I'll apologize to her publicly
as well. Let me be extremely clear, while I might not have been sober or of sound mind during this time, I accept responsibility for the pain and suffering I caused, and my delay in posting this is due to the spending the last few days offline while going through withdraw as I sobered up enough to be brutally honest with you and myself. I know some of you won't forgive me. I'd recognize that you're not required to. No one ever wants to be judged by their worst actions, so it's
not always up to us. I'll be reaching out to everyone directly impacted, though that may take time since I'm checking into an intensive psychiatric care and rehab facility, which means I'll be mostly off social media as I need to give one hundred percent of the program if I want it to stick. All I can do going forward is try to live my life in a way that shows you that these are not empty words.
Wow, what a redemption arc for her. She was struggling with addiction, a secret addiction that no one knew about, but now she's over it.
So yeah, I mean, I will say this.
I don't want to get too deep into this because, like, she may very well be suffering from genuine mental health and substance abuse issues. However, I really do take issue with how she uses her mental and substance abuse issues as a defense, Like it is the very first sentence of this explanation, even And I just don't know that I would agree that mental health issues or substance issues would cause you to do something that is like so clearly racially motivated, you know, I don't. I don't think
that is a defense. And I take issue with how she is framing it of like, oh, I was suffering from some kind of a mental breakdown. I know plenty of people who suffer with addiction issues and suffer with mental health issues, and I don't know that this is something that I would say is a typical result of dealing with mental or substance abuse issues.
I'll put it that way.
Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Please, really mean racial behavior not a typical result of dealing with mental health issues.
So after all of this, Kate's agent dropped, her publisher dropped her.
It does seem like that.
At first, her publisher, del Rey, was like, oh, we're gonna puld her book launch. We're not going to launch it until later, like maybe we'll launch it when the heat dies down. But then they said recently that they are just going to drop her permanently.
Her friend who.
Stuck up for her in that slack channel for debut authors, Meredith Mooring, has publicly said that she felt lied to and that she is you know, saying like, I'm not going to talk to Kate ever again, that she lied to me.
I don't trust her, honestly. Here is the thing.
It sounds like Kate really truly had an amazing thing going, a well regarded book deal, a subscription, a subscription, box deal, maybe movie rights, and she threw it all away because of her decision to do this, Like this is on her, Like she lost it because of her own choices.
Yeah, and we can take her at her word that she did this out of you know, fear of her own success, but or you know, lack of success jealousy, I guess. But even if that's true, and that's what motivated her, Like doesn't remotely make it okay. And like you said that, like that fear drove her to do this thing that threw it all away.
So I absolutely want to get into that because I do think this is a story about what happens when you don't check some of your more destructive impulses and jealousy, Like dealing with jealousy is certainly something I know a little bit about. But like, yes, I agree.
So there is so much going on here.
First, I think there is a really clear platform piece happening here. It is not surprising to me that this is all happening on Goodreads. Good Reads, which is owned by Amazon, does say that they have rules against review bombing. Their rules say artificially inflating or deflating a book's ratings or reputation violates our rules. This includes activity like creating fake accounts to manipulate book ratings, purchasing reviews, and incentivizing votes, likes, or other actions on Goodreads.
They have that as their policy.
However, this is far from the first time that review bombing campaigns have happened done Goodreads, and also this is not even the first time that they have been racially motivated. Back in the summer, The New York Times published a piece called how review bombing can tank a book before
it's published. In it, they described how the same things that make good Reads work and like a platform that people want to show up to to talk about books, you know, excitement and passion around books also makes it an effective tool to sabota, and like most online attacks, it is more marginalized people who bear the brunt of it.
The New York Times talked to Cecilia Rabbis, a black woman and a former data scientist at Google who left tech to write her debut novel called Everything's Fine, which is about a young black woman working at Goldman Sex who falls in love with a conservative white co worker with bigoted views. Her book was the target of coordinated review bombing campaigns. Cecilia says, it may look like a bunch of one star reviews on Goodreads, but these are
broader campaigns of harassment. People were very keen to not just attack the work, but to attack me as well. Some of the reviews actually say like, I didn't read this book, I've never read this book, but I feel inclined to leave this review anyway, and Cecilia says that it's not just like somebody leaving a mean review, that
this can actually impact how the book is received. She says, I was concerned about the risk of contagion and that readers and reviewers would dismiss the work without really engaging it. I felt particularly vulnerable as a debut author, but also as a black woman author. So you're probably not surprised to hear how much Amazon has taken over the book publishing space. We actually did an episode about it a while back with Jane Friedman after somebody on Amazon was
selling Ai dupes of her books using her name. But since Amazon has purchased Goodreads, Amazon has basically dominated the book publishing space, and Goodreads is an incredibly powerful tool for authors to get their work discovered. So review bombing can actually have a meaningful impact on writers getting their books read, and it can make or break whether or not an author is able to successfully launch their work.
So on Amazon, like the Amazon Shopping apparatus, it actually tells you if the person who is leaving a review on Amazon has actually purchased the book or not through Amazon. And Amazon's like shopping platform does not allow anybody to leave reviews.
On books that are not yet out.
However, that is not the case on Goodreads, which leaves it uniquely open to coordinated attacks on books that aren't even out yet.
I don't mean books that.
Aren't out yet in the like, oh, there's a specific release date further in the future sense. I mean books that aren't out yet in the like this is still an idea in the author's head sense, you know, like George R. R. Martin's long awaited The Winds of the Winter, which is the next installment in his Song of Fire and Ice series, does not even have an official release date, like, as far as we know, it has not been written. However, that has not stopped it from amassing more than ten
eight hundred ratings and five hundred reviews on Goodreads. As far as we know, this book is not even on paper. It is like still in George R. R. Martin's head.
That's pretty wild. I wonder what its rating is.
It's four point four to h He's got four and a half stars.
I can see someone doing this because they love George R. R. Martin, and so they'd want to like give it a five to give him a boost or something. Or you could see people panning it because they really hate George or Martin and giving him a one. How does it get like foreign change who's coming in here and being like, yeah, it'll probably be all right.
So it's a lot of people just using this space. I'm looking at it now. They're just like using this space to be like when is this book coming out?
Somebody who has been.
Updating their review for years. Here's the top review. I have this plan that when this comes out in twenty fifteen, I'm going to drop my child by then age four, at off at grandma and Grandpa's house, get myself a hotel room, and do nothing but read this for three days straight.
Then an update.
Alas as twenty fifteen begins to fade, I have come to the realization that my plan will never come to frumission. It was a good plan. I'll miss the plan maybe twenty sixteen. Update of the update twenty sixteen is half over. At this point, I'm pretty sure when I purchase this book, it's going to be a page that says just watch the show, followed by six hundred blank pages. New update
it's twenty seventeen. I give up another update. It's twenty twenty, and I returned to this hopeful snapshot of my optimistic youth from time to time to wonder what it must have been like to be so innocent. Alas last update, Oh my sweet summer child, do you remember what it was like to have such hope, such confidence? Twenty fifteen, it was going to be your year. But as summer of twenty twenty two, phades and leaves began to fall.
It is clear that no one will be reading this book even now, some seven years later, in twenty twenty two, what could have been?
Wow, George R. Martin Lake ruining this guy's life, taking away his childhood.
He's been leaving these reviews for years more.
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
So beyond this being like a tech and platform story, I do think there is something to the fact that Kate was review bombing and targeting marginalized writers, queer authors, authors of color, and that these specific authors were the ones that she was concerned were going to outshine her
own debut. I do think that there's this attitude that people of color are like the golden children of publishing right now last year, James Patterson, who is this ridiculously successful writer said that older white men like him basically cannot get writing jobs right now, saying, can you get a job, yes? Is it harder, Yes, it's even harder for older writers. You don't meet many fifty two year
old white males, he insisted. Now keep in mind, this is somebody that has sold more than four hundred and fifty million books during his storied thirty year career, where his books have been turned into blockbuster movies.
Joyce Carol Oates, who.
I have to say, is kind of my like forever problematic save Joyce Carol Oates. She's like the Azalea Banks of the book industry.
Like she like.
Nine times out of ten she's super wrong, but when she is right, she is so right. That's how I would describe her. I cannot quit Joyce Carol Oates, she is my forever problematic fave. Well, she said the very same thing.
She said.
A friend who was a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good. They're just not interested. This is heartbreaking for writers who may in fact be brilliant and critical of their own privilege.
So there is this attitude that the only.
People who find success in the book world are people who are traditionally marginalized. But it's so laughably and frustratingly untrue, and the data could not demonstrate how clearly untrue. This is more clearly that it is white people who still and always have been the majority of the book publishing space. Penguin Random House did an audit where they found that white contributors accounted for seventy six percent of books released
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one. Thirty four percent of those writers were male. A twenty twenty analysis by New York Times surveyed more than seven thousand popular novels published by the largest publishing houses Simon and Schuster, Penguin, Random House, Double Day, HarperCollins, and McMillan of the Book surveyed ninety five percent of them were written by white people.
In twenty eighteen alone, non Hispanic white people wrote a whopping eighty nine percent of the books sampled.
So it's white people.
Like white people are the ones who are dominating the industry and always have. I do think there is this very assistant attitude that, oh, you have to be like a person of color or like somehow marginalized to get a foothold in the publishing space. But that just betrays the reality that that that like the people who are succeeding in the space are white people. It's just is this just the truth?
Yeah, those statue just read, We're pretty overwhelming that in that analysis of authors of the books, what were they? It was the New York Times studying. Yeah, were written by white people. That's like way over the proportion of the population that is white.
And I also think it mirrors this conversation that's sort of bubbling up now around does diversity and inclusion efforts. We'll have an episode diving into some of this next
week about that wild situation happening at Harvard. But I do think that people will sit here with a straight face and say that they believe that black and brown folks are being handed like cushy gigs or cushy contracts in spaces that have mostly been dominated by white people, when the reality is that they don't give us shit if a black person or a brown person has wound up in a space where there are not a lot of black and brown people, best believe that is because that person earned that shit.
They don't give us anything.
People are out here thinking that, like, oh, they're just handing out book deals and cushy reviews and like praise to black people.
I would like some of that, please.
If they're handing that out, I would love to be the first in line that gets them, because that has
not been my experience. And even beyond the racial dynamics at play, I think that Kate's story really is like what you were talking about before, Mike, that it is one of what happens when you are, as my father used to say, when you're so busy looking at everybody else's plate that your own food gets cold, right, Like, you are so focused on the comparison game and looking at what other people have and obsessing about it and like really internalizing what's going on with others that you
can't even focus on what you have, which, in Kate's situation, was a lot. Kate had a lot of success, and she ruined that because of her own inability to stop being jealous and stop obsessing and fantasizing about what other people might get.
Yeah, jealousy is so destructive.
It's true, And like this is the reason why I know this like I'm speaking from experience, is that I mean, like I have definitely had to struggle to deal with jealousy. I wasn't handling it through review bombing my colleagues, thank god, but you when you make something, particularly when you're in a creative field. But I'm sure anybody who is in
any kind of feel can relate to this. You really have to work to learn to not let things like jealousy and comparison get to you if you're going to make anything right like, especially right now this time of year where all of my very very talented friends and colleagues are making like best of lists and getting awards and things like that, it can be hard. Like I don't want to negate the fact that Kate probably was dealing with very real feelings that are tough to grapple with.
I've had to do a ton of work to keep that kind of comparison and jealousy from making me spin out or making me like second guess my own work. If this is something that sounds familiar, I will give you.
I will give folks a tip like the way that I have learned to sort of reprogram jealousy in my own mind is by kind of flipping the dynamic a little bit and so training myself to see the winds of people in my circle, the winds of people that I know as my own wins, and so like when a friend of mine gets on a best of list, telling myself like, wow, how great for me that I am connected to such a dynamic network of creators that I know somebody like this, Like what a win for me?
You know, this is wow, this is somebody that maybe I can collaborate with, Like, what a great thing for me. Like, really seeing the wins of other people as wins for yourself has really helped me sort of reframe the game a little bit and like not be like salty when someone gets something that I want, it could be helpful.
So that's a little tip for folks.
But I also think it's about remembering that success is not finite. Something good happening to somebody else does not mean that something is being taken away from you.
They're like, it is such a white.
Supremacist and also like patriarchal lie that there could only be one there's only enough room for one person to be successful.
Capitalism and white supremacy and all of.
Those other other forces want us to think that there is only enough room for one, but that is a lie.
There truly is enough for all of us.
There is enough room for all of us to be at the table, There is enough room for all of us to be successful, for all of us to have what we need. You do not need the voice in your head that says that other people doing similar work are your competitors and not your collaborators. That voice is a liar. There is truly enough room for all of us, and honestly, we can all be successful. We can all win. And Kate, that's the thing is Kate really was successful.
It sounds like, but she spoiled it all. And you know what, it wasn't authors of color who blocked her bag.
It was her own behavior, like it was herself in the end. That is the main, your main hater, yourself.
Yeah, what an arc to the story.
Huh, it's true.
So we'll add a link in the show notes to the different authors who were impacted if you want to get their books.
Show them some love. Yeah, a wild story.
At the end of the day, remember, don't let jealousy let you spin out and block your own bag.
You truly are enough.
Don't leave fake reviews, don't make up fake conversations with people who don't exist. Just do your best. That's all we can do.
Well, Thanks, Bridget, I really enjoyed that. That was a wild story.
I told you it was wild.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review.
Us on Apple Podcasts.
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