Thread by @Informatter

As we enter week 2 of #BadArtFriend discourse, I’m seeing certain commentators trying to understand why this story has had such staying power — *why* people still seem to care so much. The simple answer?

We’ve been collectively gaslit. 1/

(If you feel like you're too unbothered or too cool to care about this, gold star for you. Feel free to mute.)

When the story first dropped, we saw a near-universal wave of disdain directed at Dawn Dorland on Twitter, and ginger (if not outright) support for Sonya Larson. 2/

Much of this initial response was marshaled by respected voices both within the literary community and the platform writ large. What’s interesting is that if you looked beyond Twitter, the tenor of the conversation was markedly different. 3/

The vast majority of the nearly 3,000 comments on the actual article leaned heavily in Dorland’s favor. In anonymous forums ranging from MetaFilter to Reddit and elsewhere, opinions were much more balanced, perhaps even favoring Dorland. 4/

The cleavages between much of the Twitter blue-check crowd and the “general public” couldn't have been more apparent. Won’t get into specifics here, but the prevailing consensus among some seemed to be that cruelty and plagiarism are less punishable than being a little gauche. 5/

Opinions began to shift when receipts detailing the extent of Larson & co’s cruelty came to the fore (h/t @dancow, @kidneygate et al), along with the burgeoning realization that the article was heavily slanted against Dorland. 6/

@dancow @kidneygate Timelines and motives were artfully, if not intentionally, obfuscated — leaving us with the question of why, in telling this story, @bobkolker and @nytimes seemed to have prioritized virality and narrative flair over plain ethical journalism. 7/

@dancow @kidneygate @bobkolker @nytimes We were led on a journey in which we were made to believe one thing — goaded on by people with powerful platforms — only to find out we were collectively duped by the story and the ensuing sensationalism that emerged around it.

The erosion of trust here cannot be overstated. 8/

@dancow @kidneygate @bobkolker @nytimes As a POC, I was fully ready to eat up the story of a crazy, entitled white woman trying to kill a WOC’s career. I instead feel grossly manipulated and genuinely disturbed by the initial response to this story — one colored by misogyny, classism, ableism and sheer cruelty. 9/

@dancow @kidneygate @bobkolker @nytimes Misinformed half-truths that have since been largely debunked continue to filter out, and will reverberate across the internet and IRL for some time to come — to the genuine detriment of not just Dorland, but many others who see themselves in her experiences. 10/

@dancow @kidneygate @bobkolker @nytimes More importantly — and this gets to the heart of why this seemingly frivolous saga *actually matters* — the gross irresponsibility of both the story and the actors involved will have real-life ramifications for the 100,000 people in this country who desperately need a kidney; 11/

@dancow @kidneygate @bobkolker @nytimes the 12 people who die each day waiting for a kidney transplant; and the many donors (and potential donors) whose actions have been tainted by uninformed Writers who thought their Art was beyond reproach, and the gleefully malicious enablers and sycophants who surrounded them. 12/

@dancow @kidneygate @bobkolker @nytimes We are left with questions about how certain individuals and organizations with power are given such disastrously wide leeway to damage without any hint of remorse or contrition. 13/

@dancow @kidneygate @bobkolker @nytimes How is plagiarism — and the implicit or explicit support of such — *not* immediately seen as a potentially career-ending offense among writers?

How did we arrive at such drastically divergent understandings of what is moral and ethical?

How was any of this OK? 14/14