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johngreenisagoodperson · 7 years ago

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re: the slj comment

Like many—maybe even most—folks in the YA Lit community, I’ve been following the discussion about assault and abuse within the industry. That discussion reached a new level of attention with Anne Ursu’s amazing, devastating Medium article collecting over ninety anonymous accounts, and escalated when people began anonymously naming perpetrators and predators in the comments of this SLJ article. Jay Asher, James Dashner, Sherman Alexie, Matt de la Pena, Tristina Wright, and many others were among them. Most of these names were corroborated in other spaces, such as Twitter. The Jay Asher revelations were also covered by Buzzfeed and the New York Times.

The comment function seems to have been turned off tonight (edit: it appears to have been re-enabled), but not before someone left a comment about John Green. The comment was left under the name “why is no one saying it” and reads as follows:

“He reacted extremely violently to teens expressing discomfort with him forcing attention on them, and the YA community came to his aid. Why exactly should anyone trust a community of adult women who turned on teenage girls for calling “creepy” an adult man who compulsively followed, messaged, and tried to ingratiate himself with them when they did not want it?

He’s also friends with, or had a professional relationship with, way more sexual predators than one would think is the average amount. Like calls to like. Why does he end up surrounding himself with rapists and pedophiles if something about their dynamic as people doesn’t resonate with him? (Sam Pepper, Alex Day, Tom Milsom, Mike Lombardo, Austin Jones, Ed Blann, Josh Macedo). The percentage of sexual predators who have been, or are, in Green’s “inner circle” is really worrisome, and I wonder just how many people his illusion of Ultimate Rockstar Status is silencing.”

I want to make it crystal fucking clear that I believe victims. I believe every firsthand and secondhand account from the comments, and I will believe the accounts that will continue to surface as this vital conversation continues. I am an abuse survivor; I have experienced sexual assault; I have done work in abuse awareness and prevention in these spaces. I do not think false accusations are the epidemic MRAs would have us believe, and I don’t even think they’re much of a concern. I have no tolerance for abuse, assault, manipulation, or apologism. I have no tolerance for gaslighting. With all of that said:

This comment is not an account of abuse or assault.

This comment is not even a third-hand account. This comment is a leap to a presumption of guilt based entirely on the snowball-style smear campaigns and resulting pile-ons from around the time of the The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns movie releases, which were 1) founded on misinformation, deliberate bad-faith misinterpretation, and the spreading of both as intensified by the internet’s hellish nature and 2) the entire reason I started this tumblr, and as such documented in its content.

To address this comment’s allegations and implications:

1) “He reacted extremely violently to teens expressing discomfort with him forcing attention on them, and the YA community came to his aid.”

This is referencing one of the bigger moments from The Internet Nightmare of 2014/15, during which John reblogged a popular post which said this:

“[john green]’s a creep who panders to teenage girls so that he can amass some weird cult-like following. and it’s always girls who feel misunderstood, you know, and he goes out of his way to make them feel important and desirable. which is fucking? weird?

also he has a social media presence that is equivalent to that dad of a kid in your friend group who always volunteers to “supervise” the pool parties and scoots his lawn chair close to all the girls.”

John’s reblog included this:

“You want me to defend myself against the implication that I sexually abuse children?

Okay. I do not sexually abuse children.

Throwing that kind of accusation around is sick and libelous and most importantly damages the discourse around the actual sexual abuse of children. When you use accusations of pedophilia as a way of insulting people whose work you don’t like, you trivialize abuse. I’m tired of seeing the language of social justice–important language doing important work–misused as a way to dehumanize others and treat them hatefully.”

(It’s since been deleted or made private on John’s blog, but here is Roxane Gay’s reblog. Note the “lets get this enough notes so he has to address it and try to defend himself lmao” and url tag that precede John’s response.)

This is what that “extremely violent reaction” thing refers to. This is what people are talking about when they, to this day, harken back to the time John Green silenced a teenage girl or something.

Many YA authors did come to his defense. A few examples:

Maureen Johnson

Maggie Stiefvater

Maggie Stiefvater again

Libba Bray

This is often painted as a pile-on on this person, and while I want to be clear that I understand how authors (or any community of public figures) circling the wagons can very often (probably, like, most of the time) be a bad idea with bad impacts, this was a reaction to not just the one post, but to the climate of widespread John Green hate and misinformation and straight up harassment at the time.

For some background:

Not only was this an upsetting post on its own, it was made (and gathered momentum) at a time where everybody was making these kinds of posts. TFiOS had gained so much ubiquity that it became the thing du jour—everyone was trying to provide the hottest take, the most incisive thinkpiece, the edgiest post/tweet/meme. Everyone was desperate to prove their discerning intellect and Good Taste by pouncing on the latest thing teenage girls had made inconceivably popular. Combined with the then-prominent YFIP wave and how it had consumed tumblr, making “How many incidents, sound bytes, and human mistakes can I take out of context to put in a bulleted list so we can declare another person evil without an iota of nuance or a moment’s critical thought?” the prevailing discursive format, this made John and his books easy targets. It was a perfect storm. It led literally hundreds of thousands of people to absorb this false, patchwork image of John based off of the posts and tweets and lunchtime conversations they came across before they ever interacted with his work or his actual internet presence.

This stuff was inescapable. At the time, my job involved interacting closely with the Nerdfighter community and its related tags/spaces, which meant I saw how deep it went and how far it spread. It became this huge, tumblr-wide game of telephone, and people accepted it all as shorthand for “John Green is trash.” Like, years after this entire situation, I met someone in a coffee shop who was also deep in this area of the internet and when John Green came up in conversation she started quoting these posts down to the letter as her reasons for hating him—I could remember them from having seen them so much. This turning of the internet tides has had impacts still reverberating now, as evidenced by that SLJ comment.

But at the time, it was particularly harrowing. It made any job or volunteer position even vaguely involving affiliation with John or Hank or their community hell, and I’m intimately aware of how deeply it affected people. Imagine seeing mountains and mountains of hate and harassment not founded in any sort of reality posted ad infinitum against someone you know personally, or work with, or share mutual friends with and thereby care about by proxy; imagine knowing, for a fact, that these posts and implications are not real, but being completely unable to say or do anything that constitutes even a drop in the bucket compared against the way the telephone game has grown; imagine having to see these things each day and see how they affect people around you and the people accused by name and know that you can’t do much of anything about it.

And, listen, it did affect John and his family. To keep it just to things posted publicly: John had been very open for years prior to TFiOS blowing up about his experiences with anxiety and how it affected his interactions with other people, including people in fandom spaces—at conferences, at events, on the internet. When his fame skyrocketed with the book’s (and then movie’s) huge success, the wave of hate that came with it was bound to interact poorly with those circumstances. One example that I always come back to: in this Reddit comment, John talked about how there had been credible threats made against his family and how they worsened his anxiety and led to panic attacks in public places.

The point of all of this being: John’s reply came at a time where he and his loved ones had to see this stuff by the hundreds every single day, which is something I don’t think people take into consideration when they say that his response was disproportionate.

A few posts on this blog about this incident in particular which might provide further insight:

Breaking down willful misinterpretations of the original post and John’s response.

On John “manipulating a young woman’s words” / breaking down some of the reaction to his reply.

Re: misinformation about the original post coming from a “teenage girl” (the urls don’t work anymore because this was years and years ago)

2) “He’s also friends with, or had a professional relationship with, way more sexual predators than one would think is the average amount. Like calls to like. Why does he end up surrounding himself with rapists and pedophiles if something about their dynamic as people doesn’t resonate with him? (Sam Pepper, Alex Day, Tom Milsom, Mike Lombardo, Austin Jones, Ed Blann, Josh Macedo). The percentage of sexual predators who have been, or are, in Green’s “inner circle” is really worrisome, and I wonder just how many people his illusion of Ultimate Rockstar Status is silencing.”

This refers to the time in the Nerdfighter community (which refers to the community surrounding, first, the Vlogbrothers channel and John and Hank’s work, which grew to surround other creators, including many of those named above) in the spring of 2014 when several people began coming forward to reveal that several notable figures had perpetrated abuse, assault, and predatory behavior, often against teenage girls. This began when Mike Lombardo was arrested and later incarcerated for possession of child pornography (including photos and videos solicited from teenage girls who were his fans), sending a shockwave through the community and opening the floodgates for more people to come forward. (To clarify, the Sam Pepper situation was separate from this.) Think of this as Nerdfighteria’s own #MeToo/#TimesUp reckoning years before we had those terms. Many of these abusers’ music was sold on DFTBA Records (now just DFTBA), and many of them were guests at early VidCons.

Whenever these allegations came to light, these people’s work was almost immediately removed from DFTBA Records. They were also uninvited from VidCon if they were being slated as guests, and were never invited again. They were publicly removed from the community.

This comment supposes that John knew, or that his initial association with these people indicates some greater probability of guilt himself. On these fronts:

This post goes deep on explaining that John and Hank, like many people even closer to these abusers, did not know, and dissects the rumors about their responses. It provides background on how this all unfolded.

As we have learned/been reminded of many times over with recent #MeToo/#TimesUp reckonings, every industry/community has its share of abusers. If we were to say that every person who initially associated with someone later revealed to be guilty of abuse, assault, manipulation, etc. were themselves probably guilty of something, every single person would be guilty. Everyone. In a way, of course, that part is true: by virtue of being born into toxic, broken societies built on abuse and assault and imbalances of power and and and, we’re all complicit in some ways and we must all unlearn and do the work necessary to work towards better, safer, more equal spaces. But what this comment implies—that John is guilty, or probably guilty, himself—is a huge, dangerous, unfounded leap.

That closing bit—”I wonder just how many people his illusion of Ultimate Rockstar Status is silencing.”— is the most worrisome part. In a vital, vital moment full of brave people coming forward to share first- and second-hand accounts of abuse, assault, and predatory behavior, this comment dives in to reference a complicated internet situation from years ago. This reference, warped by time and spin and that big ol’ game of telephone, twists what actually happened until it is unrecognizable, until it matches the tone of the actual revelations, and tucks the reference into a context where it does not belong. It tucks the reference into this context in such a way that it could be read as another naming, another account. This is already how it’s being misconstrued (I’ve seen many tweets from Spanish-speaking book folks, in particular).

I am not trying to call “false accusation” on this, because 1) as stated above, I do not think false accusations are even a thing to worry about and 2) it is not an accusation to begin with. It’s something different, insidious, part of a smear campaign dating back almost five years now, and it’s taking advantage of this moment to try to continue that cause. It’s deliberately misleading, opportunistic, irresponsible. It’s trying to take advantage of the prevailing attitude of “we must believe victims”—an attitude that I am 100%, unequivocally, in agreement with, both in philosophy and in practice—to make those overwhelmed by the flood of information and revelations lump this name in with the other actual revelations in those comments. Don’t let it.

I’m happy to clarify anything or field any concerns or provide further context or answer any questions about this in general or just listen.

Further reading:

“On John Green and reading with nuance”

On listening to teenage girls

On the way people talk about John’s interactions with teenage girls

#john green #john green hate #anti john green #ya lit #young adult literature

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johngreenisagoodperson · 7 years ago

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I love how the main criticism of John Green books is that he makes his teens too intelligent. Like, I want you to absorb that. He refuses to condescend to his target audience and that’s a. Negative? Thing????

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johngreenisagoodperson · 7 years ago

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before people sneer out their butts when john green’s new book “turtles all the way down” comes out, allow me to remind u 1.john’s work has always been written for teens. don’t rip into teens for reading fiction that was written for them and not necessarily u, also tatwd centers on a young girl living with ocd (a protagonist i kno my ocd ass would’ve benefited from a lot as a teen). 2. before u jump on john for romanticizing ocd, keep in mind he has always been open about his struggles with severe ocd and 3. his work has always centered on the idea of dismantling the way society romanticizes the suffering of young people vs. the way their suffering is actually treated by those around them and how this suffering twists the lives of those around us whether we like it or not. maybe that’s not your interpretation and that’s okay but if ur not a fan of john green’s work, don’t be an ass to the people who are

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johngreenisagoodperson · 7 years ago

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a few people have asked me if this blog will make a return now that turtles all the way down (which hit so close to home and broke me wide open and i am so so so thankful for) is out, and i’ve been thinking about that:

when i started this blog, i was working a job that involved keeping up + engaging with the nerdfighter and john green and hank green tags; when filling them with hate and harassment was the internet’s hobby of the year, that meant trudging through the bile in a way that, because of the way that i am as a person, was really damaging and exhausting and galling to me, and i really truly felt like i had to do something, just to quiet the guilt and restlessness about not doing anything at all.

i didn’t really expect anyone to see this, or for it to accomplish anything other than scratching that gotta-do-something itch for me personally,

and i still have no delusions about it being any huge change, but the fact that it did help some people, and in some ways showed other people upset by this whole situation that they weren’t the only ones upset by it, did mean a lot to me.

there are things about the brief and intense experience of running this blog that were actually? quite formative for me?

i do feel something approaching embarrassment about this blog, just by virtue of it being something i started when i was still a teen, and by virtue of it involving a level of zeal i don’t think i possess anymore (though i’m still very zealous n zesty; it’s just that extra inch of zeal here, in this blog, that gives me a “whoa there buddy” reflex)

also the last several years have involved a lot of change for me, personally, in the ways of jobs and places in life and where i fit into several schemes of several things and how i see the world and how i understand public figures and how i want to interact, or not interact, with public figures and how in some small small small ways i know what it is to be a public figure and just the way i process things and and and etc

so i do feel a little bit embarrassed,

but i don’t feel ashamed. i don’t wish i hadn’t started this. i maintain that i’m not the sort of person to be comfortable in idleness when i see something happening, and i continue to be so-gryffindor-it-often-inconveniences-me-and-those-around-me in life.

and a whole lot has changed since this blog’s heyday

the Internet Hate Campaign Against John Green has receded, as Internet Hate Campaigns do.

as of a year ago next week, i no longer have the job that required me to be in constant interaction with john green and hank green and nerdfighter tags

i think a lot of people on a lot of levels have made a lot of changes in the way they use the internet

but

i think there might be a new, smaller uptick in the hate campaign just because of the coverage the book is getting.

while i don’t have that look-at-the-internet-every-day job, i am still part of these communities, and i look at these tags (though less often and with less responsibility) for my own purposes, and i’m also more in interaction with spaces around ya lit and stuff as i try to finally write my own books, and i still see stuff. i still listen, and i still have trouble turning my ears off.

i still care an often annoying amount about everything always.

so i guess what i mean to say is that this thing won’t come back w/o i don’t need it to, but i’m still here, still listening and reading and thinking about too much, and i’ll likely still post here from time to time.

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johngreenisagoodperson · 8 years ago

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i can’t wait for tumblr to complain about john green’s new novel’s portrayal of mental illness even though it’s based on his own experience!

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johngreenisagoodperson · 8 years ago

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hi hello some things happened last week and i want to talk about it:

some months ago, just before leaving for a fan conference, i met a local artist through a mutual friend at a coffee shop, and as the shop was closing up i made some comment about my upcoming trip (and a trip i had taken the month before that, to a different conference) to my friend and her friend, the artist, flipped out. this is how we discovered we came from a similar internet past: she had attended youtube gatherings back in the day and followed internet communities closely, but fell out sometime around several people were outed as abusers. she knew what i was talking about when i said vidcon and leakycon and john and hank,

we hung out a couple of times after that, and we get along well. two weekends ago, though, we got together with some other new friends for coffee and a few hours in she brought john up somehow, as part of a different conversation, as a negative example of a ya author/internet presence. she quoted a lot of the rhetoric written against john here, word for word, to the point where i could mentally place them in different memorable posts. it was surreal to watch and listen as this false, disingenuous, malicious mythology so widely and violently circulated was spun again, as truth, in a setting i didn’t expect it to come up in a solid year or more after i had last engaged with it.

earlier this week i landed myself at the bullseye of a small but intensely motivated good old-fashioned internet hate campaign of my own, which spiraled so quickly and violently that it turned into an organized campaign to try to get me fired from my job with talk of also trying to get my fired from my internship. i sifted through hundreds of screenshots of strangers talking about me, spinning a false image of me with no grounding in reality as truth, making vague threats against me. someone actually called it vigilante justice. i think hate campaigns always brand or misunderstand themselves as vigilante justice.

i’m not talking about callout posts. i’m not talking about s*cial j*stice w*rriors (an identity i’ll gladly take on any hecking day, thx). i’m talking about when a group sees a glimmer of something they hate in a given person, and makes that person a stand-in for all these other things they hate, and assigns value to hating those things and those people and acting against them - ruthlessly, recklessly, until people have been run out of their space.

this isn’t the first time it’s happened to me. i experienced a larger version of this as a young teenager who talked too much in a very intense fandom. but it took me so long to recognize this as abnormal or inappropriate or in any way unusual despite my past experiences with it and despite the months of my life i spent running this blog about someone else’s much larger, much different experience with it. i still get confused when i talk to people about it and they react with shock or deep concern, because i go “isn’t this a normal day on the internet?”

if it is, it shouldn’t be.

anyway.

this post was supposed to be about permanence. about how people are still referring to posts that went around years ago, with unyielding belief in the narrative. this is about how i still silence myself based on harassment i experienced as a teenager, still get nervous about saying anything ever, still question the worth of my presence in internet spaces, haven’t really shared any significant opinion on the internet dot com since the early 2010s. i can’t and absolutely do not speak for john, but i think it’s very obvious how differently he engages with the internet these days. and i think you can also trace the difference in people in the community speaking up about nerdfighteria, publicly identifying as nerdfighters, saying anything that might ever catch the ire of the internet hate machine. this is about the lasting impact of internet abuse on the people who experience it and the people who believe it.

notice it. try to point it out to others. try to realize when it’s happening to you, and know it’s not your fault, and know you don’t deserve it. try to work and speak and act against it every chance you get. don’t be a jerk. be kind. every kind thing counts.

#john green hate #john green #anti john green #nerdfighters #hank green hate

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