Young Adult literature seems to exist in a constant state of social media drama! Much like young adults! Remember that author who literally stalked a reader who gave her novel a bad review on Goodreads? She then turned the act of stalking into a book deal. Or maybe you recall the numerous white journalists who insisted that political correctness was killing literature, being sure to name the politically correct non-white people they blamed for killing literature, thus insuring that those particular non-white people were hounded on Twitter? (Not linking, #sorrynotsorry. )

The latest drama involved apologies, which is why we are addressing it here on SorryWatch, where we are all about staying in our lane.

Our story begins this past Tuesday, when mega-best-selling Young Adult author Sarah Dessen tweeted a screenshot of a news story quoting a college student who was not a Sarah Dessen fan. Here is the snippet Dessen shared:

Dessen blotted out the name in black. Snarly did so in pink, lest NBC News accuse her of lacking pizzazz.

Dessen responded to the putdown in a now deleted tweet:

The tweet was clearly a cri de coeur from someone going through a self-described “really hard time.” Dessen’s friends and fans — among them Jodi Picoult (172K followers), Roxane Gay (657K followers), N.K. Jemisin (110K followers), Dhonielle Clayton (28K followers), Meg Cabot (704K followers), Adam Silvera (49K followers), Celeste Ng (125K followers), Jennifer Weiner (164K followers), Angie Thomas (105K followers), and many more — rushed to her defense, sometimes with PROFANITY. And then, sure as death and taxes, Twitter did what Twitter does: Some of the authors’ followers Googled the news story, found the former college student’s name, publicly shared it, and viciously attacked her on social media.

Snarly’s own reaction to Dessen’s tweet was Aww, that kid is mean! Who joins a university-wide book-selection committee solely and specifically to prevent people from reading one well-regarded Young Adult author? (Not a book. An AUTHOR. And it’s especially odd given that one of the other contenders was by noted homophobe Orson Scott Card.) Snarly’s second reaction was “Clearly this person has never READ Sarah Dessen.” Dessen’s writing is superb. (The student later claimed her quote was taken out of context; she said she did join to advocate for other writers, not just to downvote Dessen. So, spoiler alert, this is going to become a story about journalists doing crappy jobs.) Snarly’s third reaction was “This young woman wants young women to be taken seriously, which in her mind, sadly, requires that girls distance themselves from and disavow YA.”

Hours after Dessen posted her tweet (before the backlash to the backlash that was coming like a horde of lurching B-movie zombies), Northern State posted an apology to Dessen. A good one!

Why is this a good apology? It offers explanation without excuse, something very difficult to do (which is why we often recommend you not even try). It doesn’t name the alum, which would have opened her up to abuse, which lay in wait for her anyway like a monster behind a door in another B movie, but that’s not Northern State’s fault. It gets to the heart of what all the famous authors who supported Dessen were often inartfully pointing out: Genres that speak primarily to women and girls are often dismissed and disrespected. The university wanted to note that they get it. They see the value of YA. They’d brought a YA novelist to campus in 2018! (That YA novelist was one of the authors who came out in support of Dessen, telling Northern State, in a now-deleted tweet, YEAHNO DON’T INVITE ME OR MY BOOKS AGAIN, but oh well.) Northern State wanted to be clear that it does not censor books. The Northern State alum did not censor Dessen’s book because she didn’t have that power; the Common Read is chosen by a committee.

BUT! The alum was quickly under attack. (She’s now a graduate student studying linguistics with a focus on social media bullying, O THE IRONY.)  The authors knew immediately this was not good.

Important: The authors are mostly women who write YA and romance. A large percentage are women of color. One was a gay man of color. Several paragraphs ago (sigh, sorry), Snarly shared only the names of the supporters with vast numbers of Twitter followers, and only shared the names of supporters whose tweets Snarly personally saw. Among them she counts three white women (one of them Jewish), four Black women, one Asian woman, and one Latinx gay man. It is not an accident that almost all of the voices supporting Dessen were all from writers in snarked-at genres or from marginalized communities. (I hear you saying Roxane Gay is well-respected! And she is! But she also is constantly attacked for her appearance and for excess ambition and insufficient kowtowing to superhero movies. Gee, Snarly seems to recall Martin Scorsese snarking at superhero movies but he’s not a fat Black woman.) Dessen’s supporters were people accustomed to their work and their personhood being dismissed. It is not surprising that they responded passionately to Dessen’s hurt feelings.

Now let’s look at the way the media have been reporting this story. (Again, not linking, but Slate and Vulture, look at your life, look at your choices.)

Most of the media coverage made it sound as though Dessen named the college student. She did not. Most of the media coverage made it sound as though the authors urged a pile-on. They did not. Most of the media coverage implied that Dessen dug up a three-year-old tweet (she didn’t; it was a new news story quoting a 2016 alum). Most of the media coverage failed to quote what the student actually said  (one outlet didn’t share her quote but called it “intemperate” — that’s a Choice, media outlet). Most of the media coverage failed to note that the response to Northern State’s apology to Dessen was largely mocking, critical, vicious, accusing the school of craven kowtowing. Most of the media coverage failed to note that there are now lists going around Twitter of the names of all the authors who tweeted in support of Dessen (again, many of them women of color, many who I do not name here because they have under 15K Twitter followers) urging people NEVER TO BUY THEIR BOOKS AGAIN. Most of the media coverage failed to note that the story is now being painted in stark, literal black and white terms: Rich middle-aged white lady author names and attacks Black 19-year-old girl who only wanted the school to read Bryan Stevenson’s (superb!) Just Mercies, the book that was ultimately chosen that year.

The current narrative on Twitter — the one not noted in the media — casts Dessen as a Karen, a cookout-snuffer, a living, typing, let-me-speak-to-the-manager haircut. It casts the authors who supported her as bitchy mean girls; never mind that they a) did not name the grad student on Twitter and b) are a wildly diverse crew who care deeply about social justice. (Again, note the presence of Angie Thomas, whose brilliant book — full disclosure, Snarly wearing a different hat reviewed it for the New York Times — is about an African-American girl struggling with how to respond to her friend’s murder by a policeman; it was chosen as the Northern U Common Read in 2018.) There are people on Twitter now calling for a boycott of Angie Thomas.

And ONCE AGAIN, media leapt like a puppy at a biscuit at the framing of Those Crazy YA Authors and Their Crazy Fans, a superfun narrative that continues to lump disrespect on the genre. (Yes, Snarly capitalized on the tendency in crafting this story’s lede. Drag her.) IT IS NOT YA THAT IS THE PROBLEM; IT IS THE FACT THAT TWITTER FACILITATES BULLYING THAT IS THE PROBLEM. When people write stories about silencing and cancelling on the left, they generally fail to note that these things also occur on the right. Stop the presses: Twitter discourse lacks nuance. (280 characters, people tweeting before they think, tweeting before they have all the facts, people wanting to show they are both funny and righteous on both the left and the right.)

Allow Snarly to repeat: SOCIAL MEDIA YELLING HAPPENS ON BOTH SIDES OF EVERY ISSUE. What is retained, like an aura in your eyeball after you stare directly at the sun, is an impression of “Jeez, the YA community is full of snowflakes.” Right now the narrative is: Sarah Dessen had wah-wah hurt feelings and attacked a child. Now it’s the truth, even if it isn’t.

Snarly needs to mop her fevered brow.

Here is Dessen’s apology:

See that ratio of comments to likes? It means many people do not accept her apology. It means the media framing is wrong. However, it’s a fine apology. Dessen apologized for what she was responsible for: Bad judgment. She didn’t urge anyone to attack the grad student, who she rightly doesn’t name. SorryWatch hopes she’s reaching out to the grad student personally as well. (If she is, that fact doesn’t belong in the tweet, since it would be grandstanding.) Many of the writers apologized for their role in the brouhaha, though some have since deleted their apologies as well as their initial pro-Dessen tweets, which is kinda chickenshit but also kinda understandable because Twitter.

The takeaway: Dessen is a human being; she was feeling vulnerable; she posted something she shouldn’t have given the way other human beings act on Twitter. She should have known that, as she herself says. It’s Writing 101: Authors should not respond publicly to non-writers’ scorn. Never ends well. Doesn’t even make you feel better. If you are a writer who gets bummed when someone hates your work (or even slams you without reading your work, as I suspect the Northern grad did to Dessen), do not read your Amazon or Goodreads reviews, do not respond when someone tags you in a snotty tweet, do not read the comments. Here is Snarly’s bracelet that she wears almost every day:

If you are an author who feels sad and defeated and disrespected, as so many of us do so very often, which is often why we are writers, text a friend. Call your mom. Pet a cat. Go for a walk. Understand that social media may seem alluring as a place to unload…but it likes to bite.

Here is another apology from an author for tweeting in support of Dessen. It is from N.K. Jemisin, who is very accustomed to  abuse, in her case from white male speculative fiction fans.

Snarly enjoys the JESUS CHRIST, EVERYBODY tone. Wish Jemisin hadn’t thrown Dessen under the bus (surely she read Dessen’s tweet before responding with support? and if she didn’t, that’s on her, not Dessen) but the point here is CAN’T EVERYONE BE A FUCKING GROWNUP AND NOT ATTACK PEOPLE EVERYBODY PLEASE CHILL THE HELL OUT. Which really is a philosophy to live by. And do the research. On Twitter, in journalism (*cough*), and in life.

PS. Update from Snarly after talking to Twitter friend with a zillion followers: “I love you but you failed to convey just how much all these adults should have known better. With that many followers, they should understand how Twitter works. Sarah Dessen could’ve tweeted generically about having her feelings hurt. Which I think shows she is human. And that would have been fine. But the specific ways she and all these other grown-ass women responded was utterly wrongheaded. They acted like middle school bullies and I am very disappointed in them.” Snarly does not apologize for this post, but she acknowledges that it came from a non-famous-person perspective. And famous people need to understand the extend of their power and be responsible in wielding it.