About a month ago, a friend of mine made a noncontroversial statement on Twitter about the potential dangers of a common over-the-counter pain medication. People, including one uniquely obsessed doctor, harassed this person for days. Round the clock, non-stop QTing and long threads about why this commonly known fact—that Tylenol can damage your liver—is wrong, dangerous misinformation of the worst kind, and how the person who made the claim is an anti-vaxer.
The resulting pile-on had nothing to do with the individual being transgender (which xie is) or an anti-vaxer (which xie is not). It was just because of the extreme anti-vaccine position xie hadn’t taken, which was harming everyone. The pile-on was for the greater good.
A little while later, the same individual tweeted that some writers have sensory processing difficulties or developmental disorders that make reading for pleasure difficult and that commonly-dispensed wisdom about how much a writer should read could be construed as coming from an ableist viewpoint. Like with the Tylenol tweets, people were eager to jump on this individual.
But not because xie is trans.
In both cases, simple tweets became “the discourse,” and with the discourse came the distortion. “Did you see the YA author who said Tylenol is poison and your doctors are lying to you?” “Did you see the YA author who said reading is ableist?” That the person in question was not a YA author and had never said anything of the sort didn’t matter. This individual became the “main character” of Twitter over wholly uncontroversial statements that were made controversial by Twitter users with a bone-deep need to be furious about the things this person never said.
It had nothing to do with this individual being transgender.
Except for when it did, of course. Like months ago, when this individual painstakingly reviewed an advanced copy of an outrageously transphobic book. That’s when author and real-life Veruca Salt, Lauren Hough, stepped in and did what Lauren Hough does best: made everything about herself. This all concluded with Hough insisting that a prestigious literary award had been snatched away from her, despite never having been nominated for it in the first place.
The pile-on my friend faced only got worse, aided by mainstream media, who picked up the story of Hough’s “revoked nomination” without mentioning that Hough had simply assumed she would be handed this prize by default (Hough is the author who, some time ago, threw a days-long tantrum because people dared to give her books four stars instead of five). My friend, who isn’t a YA author, was branded a YA author at this time—a Twitter code word for someone who is the worst kind of hysterical drama seeker, a person who should be avoided and derided at all costs. The brigade rode in, eager to scream about freedom of speech, Nazi book bans, and to question whether this “YA author” had even read the offending book (which xie had, in a detailed Twitter thread and blog post, which became tragically invisible to anyone who disagreed with xer).
The fact that the individual in question is transgender was superfluous to the conversation, of course, and if the resulting widespread internet attention from the media caused an increase in harassment of this individual, that was a punishment well-deserved. It was the principle of the thing. A person who reviews a book is a person who wants to ban a book, and anyone who reviews a book is only doing so in an attempt to ruin the careers and lives of worthy, non-YA writing authors.
Nobody was simply using a silly reason to justify their own transphobia. Xie is a danger to the written word and freedom of speech.
Last night, I opened Twitter and found that Lockheed Martin was trending. With my friend’s name under it. It was the top trending topic in my country.
As it turned out, this individual works for Lockheed Martin. Making drones that kill children. Specifically, xie writes code to increase the lethality of drones targeting children in the Middle East. And xie makes upwards of $400,000 annually doing this work for the military-industrial complex while lying about xer financial situation to scam people with crowdfunding. Even worse, xer job slaughtering innocent babes in their mothers’ arms was the result of nepotism, as xer entire family works for Lockheed Martin in highly paid executive positions. And this awful person, this YA author, has been lying about it for years.
At least, that’s what Twitter would have you believe. Because in reality, this non-YA author works ten hours a week from home keeping software licenses up-to-date. A job this non-YA author can do from home as a disabled person, a job xie got through family connections, probably offered by a relative concerned about this person’s well-being and ability to live independently (and, at the time, xer’s ability to care for a disabled family member). A job that only pays the astronomical $400,000 annually because people on Twitter decided their lie about it was fact; a simple Google search reveals that the highest paid non-executives at Lockheed Martin make a quarter of that figure working full-time.
But does that matter when a person some find annoying on Twitter is outed as being, in the words of one gleeful user, “literally a cop”?
No. Because there are reasons this person needs to be punished. None of these reasons have to do with a particular website that routinely targets and doxes transgender people. Sure, the information currently circulating came from their site. Sure, they’ve targeted this person specifically because xie is transgender and uses neopronouns and tweets “cringe.” And yes, the people on that disgusting forum are currently celebrating that a trans man might commit suicide due to their doxing efforts. But this is about integrity. This is about making the truth known.
On Twitter, making the truth known always involves bending and shaping that truth to fit around whatever narrative has been embraced, but always for the greater good. “This person works in an extremely limited position dealing with software licenses for a company with defense contracts” isn’t bad enough. You have to streamline it. You have to remove all context—the availability of work for disabled people, the hurdles to employment faced by transgender people, the notoriously hostile state the individual lives in, and what the individual’s job entails—for the greater good. This person is bad. Unredeamable. And they must be punished. Whatever lies and exaggerations made to pursue that goal are immaterial as long as that goal is reached. For the greater good.
Critics of this individual were more than enthusiastic about their campaign for justice. They’d always known that their personal opinion of this individual was right. They just could never put into words what made this person so thoroughly evil. Maybe it was because xie was the ringleader of the crusade against Isabel Fall, a claim that lacks evidence but sounds incredibly good when justifying one’s behavior over the past sixteen hours. Or because xie’s outrageous censorship campaign caused Lauren Hough to have that prize she hadn’t won yanked from her hands by a blood-thirsty social justice mob. Xie was always crowdfunding; something about that is just annoying, right? Plus, xie was a “woke scold,” a person who obnoxiously and audaciously suggests that marginalized people deserve human rights. And get this: xie calls xer spouse “kissmate.” That’s just cringe. Far too precious and cute. That’s certainly harming the human race in some vile way.
There were so many reasons—none of them transphobic!—that doxing this person, accusing xer of lying, and driving xer off Twitter wasn’t just justified. It was righteous. And definitely not transphobic! Plus, finding out how horrible xer’s job is retroactively makes all the past harassment okay!
The way Twitter reckons it, securing software licenses for a defense contractor’s offices is no different than pushing the big red button to detonate a city block full of innocent civilians. Sure, some of these people work for companies that are arguably just as evil as Lockheed Martin, albeit in other ways. Some spend their time online defending members of the United States government from attacks by the right-wing mobs. Some of them have or had jobs or internships working for the United States government themselves. But without xer keeping all those software licenses in line, the United States would be wholly incapable of committing war crimes. And if xie is forced off Twitter and hopefully driven to suicide, world peace will be restored. There is no need for, nor room for, nuance in this discussion. Xie is, after all, making millions of dollars being, in the words of that astonishingly rational thinker I quoted above, “literally a cop.”
Which leaves me to wonder… if xer working for Lockheed Martin part-time means xie is directly responsible for every death caused by the U.S. government’s imperial crimes, what are the people aligning themselves with Kiwi Farms guilty of by association?
Hmm? What was that? Oh, Kiwi Farms? Probably time to note that the persistent backlash against this individual has been driven since 2016 by a website that defended its connection to the mass shooting in Christchurch, NZ (a “shithole country” with “faggot laws”) and whose members have been linked to at least three online harassment campaigns that ended in the death by suicide of their targets. The entire site exists to mock, harass, and dox people, especially transgender, autistic, and fat people, but simply being ugly or annoying can serve as reason enough to target someone and harass them, ideally to death.
While I would never doubt the righteousness of people who have turned away from the war criminal in question, I do wonder what some of them would say if they saw how their actions were being viewed by the forum that composed the jaunty tune they’re all dancing to.
“RIP Bozo, puffin on that enby war criminal pack […] maybe anna will commit unalive in roblox and kiwi farms can take credit.”
“I didn’t know anything about Ana until earlier today when all of the other trannies started shrieking for his head as a war criminal and ganged up on him until he left Twitter. The fact this happened due to information gleaned from a Kiwifarms doxing, the site they claim makes you a fascist if you even dare to peek, is perhaps the most hilarious thing I have seen all month.”
“All the YA twitter lefties are ignoring the fact that we’re the ones who got the dox lol. They always do when it conveniences them. Is KF le evil nazi forum or not, guys? Pick a side. Lockheed Martin tho”
“I saw the screeching on twitter and knew exactly where they had gotten their deets. I love how KF lays these little mines on the internet, they stay silent for years just ready to explode whenever the woke mob decide is time to eat their own.”
Phew. It’s a good thing that none of this outsized fury, public mockery, gleeful celebration of doxing, and vicious harassment had anything to do with a years-long hate campaign run by a website known for its body count. Because that might mean the outrage was driven by something other than righteousness and the shining moral purity of everyone involved. It might mean that this time, the Twitter rage machine was driven by, if not transphobia, the desperate need to have one’s own biases confirmed.
If you participated, don’t worry. Those doubts you’re having about whether or not you’re a fool who’s been led into a targeted harassment campaign by your own easily fed ego? Let them go. I mean, you’re just firmly aligned with a web forum full of people who pat themselves on the back for the suicides they’ve directly caused. It’s not like you have an extremely limited part-time job working from home for Lockheed Martin. You’re not a monster.
The @Jenny_Trout Twitter account is now updates only. You can follow it to keep up with release dates and new blog posts. You can also join me on Discord.
Please give Ana my best if you talk to xer, I have been absolutely horrified by the attacks over the months. Xie deserves so much better.
I wish this awful fucking narrative would get corrected somehow, but I know too much to be anything other than numb.
I’m so mad about the whole situation. Xie deserved so much better than this nonsense and I already miss xer.
Bc seriously LM is not a good company, but Ana needs healthcare and has been vocal about trying to find a different job for a long time.
And I’m willing to bet a decent number of the dogpile have been/are in the military or have family who were. And uh yeah the military isn’t great.
I really hope I can get in touch with Ana. He was a bright spot in the world.
I’ve been a Patreon supporter of this person since I discovered that insightful commentary on that book Man and had followed them on Twitter shortly after. I will continue to support them and Kissmate to the best of my abilities from my many states away. I’d help more if I could. I know I’m just a random here on the internet (and a parasocial at that), but if you still have a way to tell them that there are people out here in the world that support them, will you let them know? I am glad they are getting out of that state and hope their move is smooth. I’d send them the message myself, but since all I have is parasocial with them at best, I’d be afraid of being a trigger or a danger to their health or something, even with a good thing to say. :/
Here’s a weird recurring cycle:
Disabled person can’t work full time or in the office, therefore socializing less. Disabled person often finds it difficult to leave the house and thus socializes less in person, must find companionship elsewhere. On the internet, disabled person finds lots of people like them and also happens to have a lot of free time due to the previously mentioned situation. Disabled person becomes chronically online, convincing themselves that small, insignificant internet happenings are a widespread societal problem. Disabled person then becomes an Internet Shouty Person hoping to make the world a better place. Becomes more chronically online and even more removed from the real world. Disabled person inevitably makes a bad enough take that it gets wider notice and is mocked by people who do have outside friends they see often. Disabled person does more online bs about it.
Repeat cycle until inevitable deletion.
My hope for Mardoll is that he goes the way Scarlett did and actually gets out of the house sometimes. Weird how you never call out Scarlett’s misogyny and queerphobia but you’ll defend the person working at the company that actively bombs school children.
Also, would really appreciate if he stopped Asian-fishing with that picrew.
That picrew is literally his face, you can check against his author photo, but don’t feel you have to let reality get in the way of being a massive dick.
Don’t bother arguing. The picrew outrage campaign is directly from the same source. This isn’t a person who actually read this blog or has ever had anything to do with Ana aside from harassment.
Jenny, I’ve been reading your blog and I’ve been in the book Twitter/feminist Twitter circle for years. I’ve read all of your recaps. I’ve shared the posts about your asshole writer friend and her delusion with the poetry shit. I’ve bought all of the Boss series — I even bought By the Numbers! Hell, I remember your son’s name from one of the first 50SOG recaps, and I even remember teeheeing at the idea of Christian Grey finding a weird skeleton goat man under the basement stairs the way you described your son doing.
I engage with your blog.
I used to engage with you a lot.
I have defended you in multiple readers groups.
I began writing because you inspired me to.
But I think this is the point where I just can’t anymore. It’s never going to get easier and it’s never going to pay off. I think I might of had rose tinted glasses before, but I’m seeing clearly now.
The pandemic has not been good for you.
The person I admired is more reactionary and unpleasant than I ever remember her being.
Thank you for the things you helped me find in myself. I won’t be returning here.
I have never, for any reason, owed you a “pay off”.
…what the fuck? Go ply your lies and manipulations somewhere else. Ideally in fiction or roleplay or something. This is an actual human person. You are not entitled to Jenny agreeing with you on every Internet drama.
It looks nothing like him! Ffs, maybe he should go back to using that hideous one off his Shakesville blog.
Well, fuck, guess we should just feed all the disabled people into a wood chipper! Thanks for stopping by, I know your schedule is super busy with your lack of people who care about you and your seething resentment that I won’t direct my anger at the targets you want me to! Guess you just need to cry forever.
Also, would really appreciate if you would never come back here or consume any content I produce ever again. Forget my name like everyone forgets yours.
I didn’t know you were friends with Ana! It’s been so heartbreaking to watch this happen to xer over and over for the past couple of months. The phenomenon of women, queer people, and people of color becoming repeatedly the target of deliberate misinformation into harassment campaigns as soon as they have any kind of audience is one I have unfortunately grown quite accustomed to seeing on the internet lately. I’m not even surprised to find receipts showing that right-wingers orchestrate this kind of shit because that’s exactly what it reeks of: intentionally crafted misinformation designed by people who hate someone for existing to piss off people who normally would at least claim not to hate that person just for existing. A lot of people just want someone to be angry at, and they don’t want to put in the effort of fact-checking or, like, third-grade reading comprehension. Not to mention that even cases where anger is justified, so many people take it to unforgivable degrees.
Don’t worry, I stopped consuming your content when you went off the deep end a while ago. You’ve only become worse over the years, and I don’t think the pandemic has helped your state. I hope you and Ana get what you need, a life off the internet, where you don’t tweet every single hour of every single day.
Love how you still had to respond to her comment, though, which is by definition also her content that she produced. And in doing so demonstrated that you read it, or consumed it. Wow, you care so little about her content that you were following it up until “a while ago”, and then you “stopped”, except for the part where you were consuming enough of it to know that she’s “only gotten worse” by your estimates. And now you’re here, reading this post and her comments! Great job “not consuming” any of her content lmao.
Seriously, do yourself a favor and stop consuming her content for real. No one on this blog will miss you.
The part that drives me nuts is that they’re so *resistant* to actual facts! Like, if you tell them where the information they’re yelling about came from, they start yelling that you’re defending every single one of Lockheed-Martin’s deeds, despite that being so far beside the point it’s laughable.
I know people say things like “cancel culture doesn’t exist,” and the term has lost all meaning at this point, but this pile-on culture, this internet mobbing driven by a gross combo of right-wing and left-wing hatred, HAS pushed a lot of people off of a lot of platforms for really stupid stuff. It’s just not the people the media highlights; the real trend seems to be “LGBT person or woman with a big platform who has medium-hot takes online sometimes.”
…which makes me realize; some of the people who were involved in the earlier controversies fit that description. I wonder if they know they’ll potentially be on the chopping block, too, one day. I wonder if they’ll remember their part in this bandwagon if it happens.
When I saw people with like, “USMC vet” in their bios screaming about AM being responsible for war crimes, that was when I was like, nope. Nope, we’re not doing this.
They just keep INSISTING that xie’s making soooooo much money at this job and is soooooo obviously a grifter for lying about not having a job, when xie never said xie didn’t have a job. Not liking xer job because of what the company did and constantly looking for a new job xie could live off was a running theme for the whole damn time I followed xer.
It’s not even “big platforms”.
The way this goes is the pile ones happen with non-white and non-cishet people with a moderate following. They wont go after people who have millions of followers, or generally even hundreds of thousands. They go for the internet micro celebs, so people with tens of thousands (or less) of followers and small businesses (usually art). In other words: people who have a lot to lose if their online platform gets crushed.
I’m guessing is a bad mix of many on socials having lost all sense of proportion, but needing to feel in control. If they successfully trample a micro celeb’s platform, it “feels” the same as having done an Important Deed For Humanity and Taken Down A Goliath. Remember the last time they ran off a cartoonist for drawing a cartoon about stealing art supplies.
A cartoonist.
Truly the richest of the powerful.
Woof that’s depressing. I hope Ana finds peace and healing.
Idky I thought Matt Bors was better than that.
I saw an offhand reference celebrating this sequence of events on a “leftist” blog I’m aware of, went to check what had happened, and everything I heard was horrifying. If you talk to Ana please pass on our condolences and well wishes, Twitter is sort of ambiently horrible at the best of times but this is… it’s worse than disappointing when seemingly sensible people decide doxing people is okay just for making a few statements that might have been phrased poorly due to the limitations of Twitter (and that in itself is giving people more credit than they may deserve, I saw the tweet about reading being passed around out of context in writing circles and it was fine but even if it is not fine that is the place for DISCUSSION and not for DOXING. My gods)
I hope that Ana is alright and that xie and xer partner can continue to be alright and live safely and somewhat comfortably, and that the eyes of the internet turn away from them. And for that matter I hope you’re safe from the eyes of the internet as well
Oh no, this is terrible. I can’t even find words for this.
And that’s the sad state of affairs. People can’t have opinions (controversial or not), because there will be someone who doesn’t like it and all hell breaks lose. SMH.
I am hardly on social media so I can’t say I know who this person is or follow twitter wars to know what triggered who, but I hope that all this craziness will eventually blow over and they can go back to having a peaceful existence.
It’s scary to have opinions nowadays.
This is depressing as hell. I enjoyed xer take on the ableism of judging writers for not reading regularly — it’s a correct take and xie should say it — and while it’s sadly unsurprising that these hordes are incapable of comprehending nuance, it’s devastating that xie has to deal with all this. Condolences and wishes for rest and relaxation away from all this.
Tried to create a Discord account yesterday (after reading your post), but was unable to. Did the phone verification, then the email verification. Then tried to log-in, but it said my account was disabled due to violation of terms of service or community guidelines? Which is weird, because I hadn’t even been able to log-in and therefore DO anything that could be considered a violation. Have put in an appeal, so we’ll see. If you’re avoiding Twitter, you can still find me on Facebook.
I saw a lot of hot takes on this whole thing on Reddit and nearly ascended when someone (who clearly was enjoying Ana’s situation a bit too much) claimed that it “wasn’t doxxing” because all the information involved was technically publicly available.
Anyway, I hope Ana weathers this shit storm, and I hope you stay safe on the internet.
Another incredibly stupid moment- Courtney Milan made a post about something technically unrelated but that *sounded* like it was a comment on the situation. And instantly, Courtney Milan became a target with people dredging up terrible stuff from her past like that one time she was on a jury that voted a guy guilty. Juries: Well known as something you get a choice in. Or something? Anyway, a person who was totally uninvolved started getting dragged for the mere suspicion that they were defending Mardoll. She had to delete her post. Which was too bad, because the point she was making was a great one, and I can’t help thinking the people dragging her knew she was right. They thought they were being called out, even though it was unintentional, because they deserved to be called out.
I don’t know this author or really anything that’s going on because I’m very rarely on Twitter….but as a leftie whose partner works for defense contractors, I can say that I’ve definitely met people who rally against them like an IT person is the same as a warlord and it’s a fucking nightmare.
I’m really sorry for your friend.
I remember Ana from the days when we were both on Slacktivist. People I know are on a community that hates xer for being “wanky”, even though that community itself notorious loves wank, and watching wank, and participating in wank. It drives me up a wall.
Long time lurker, first time commenter (or possibly second, I don’t recall).
I followed AM for about the past six or eight months on twitter. Nothing xie said struck me as particularly annoying, oversensitive, scoldy, etc. It is not oversensitive, annoying or scoldy to have a particular ethical viewpoint, even if that viewpoint isn’t shared by others.
I witnessed the much-talked-of “is it ableist to say that writers should read a lot” threads and, despite thinking that it is important most of the time for most writers to read, did not find Mardoll’s views offensive or intolerant; if anything, xier comments made me moderate my views. It was interesting to think about my assumptions about good writing and the value of reading. It feels like I’ve fallen through into bizarro-world when I read how people describe that thread.
Of the people who claim that Mardoll sent mobs after them, the only one where I saw the whole thing was where a really TERFy queer woman was posting some pretty blatantly TERFy stuff to Mardoll and xie criticized them. I think there has to be a higher bar for “sending a mob” than “disagreeing” or even “asking people to report for hate speech” because of the nature of Twitter. You’re intrinsically in people’s business on Twitter; it’s not mobbing to respond to someone.
I don’t think that working for Lockheed Martin is particularly great, but I think that a morally normal person with common sense should be able to imagine how someone could, through inertia and the need for health insurance, get stuck in a clerical job working for a bad employer. There is a lot of ground between “this isn’t very great and I support you in stopping” and “you are a moral monster”.
For that matter, is it worse to be, eg, a part time clerk at Lockheed Martin or a full-time Facebook developer? On the one hand, LM is probably worse in total, but Facebook is pretty bad and if you’re a developer you are doing a lot more harm than a clerk maintaining software licenses. And yet no one would bat an eye if someone were revealed to be a developer at Facebook. Better or worse to be a part time clerk at LM or a full-time payroll manager at notoriously racist Wells Fargo? Part time clerk or corporate geologist? Etc etc etc. If someone were revealed to be eagerly climbing the ladder at Lockheed Martin, that would be a different story, but to have unwisely gotten locked into a job for insurance is, yeah, whatever, disappointing, but the moral calculus involved is not as straightforward as people think.
It is so obvious to me that this whole thing was basically “Mardoll has some opinions that I find goody-two-shoes and cringe so when the chance comes to brutalize them I’m going to take it”. That’s it. Mardoll’s opinions as I saw them were not “tenderqueer”, they were just a bit pollyannaish. In my experience as an internet Old, it’s good to have some pollyannas around because they correct the natural drive toward being lazy and selfish. Mardoll was a good part of a twitter ecosystem and I’m very sorry that xie is gone.
I also think a *lot* less of some people on the internet now because of their gleeful attacks on Mardoll. You don’t need to like or agree with someone to recognize that they are in fact not history’s greatest monster. It is interesting to see so many people complaining about Mardoll for being scoldy or whatever when it’s obvious that they simply were not able to tolerate xier viewpoint even existing anywhere on twitter.
People’s malice and glee over this whole thing and the number of outright lies that got told were pretty disgusting. I’ve been in some activist situations where someone had to be banned or expelled for obviously bad, dangerous behavior and it was not an occasion for glee and chuckles, let me tell you. That there was so much enjoyment says to me that no one was in this for the principle of the thing.
Anyway, I wish Ana Mardoll the best and hope that xie is getting lots of support from friends.
[…] disclosure: I had been toying with the idea of leaving Twitter for a while before the events of A Twitter Story. I felt like I couldn’t. After all, my entire brand was “chronically online,” and […]