Social responsibility and online peer pressure…

Last night, the campaign for my editor reached its goal of $500. I never mentioned it until late this afternoon, because one of my followers dropped a photo of a murdered Rohingya child in my timeline. I did the only thing I could in such a situation, dropping all my evening marketing plans and beginning to push for awareness of this tragedy. I tweeted to some people I knew with bigger audiences, asking for their help in reposting this site. I wrote up something on my blogs and cross-posted it to my Tumblr. I sent some pleading tweets to some big-name celebrities who I follow and who have in the past retweeted for human rights causes. I got an invitation to do a guest post on the topic, and I quickly typed up a slightly longer post with more information on the situation in Burma. By 3 AM, I was exhausted, but still wired, and still wondering if there was more I could do. But I’d done as much as my body would allow, and I had to let that be the end of my night.

A few of my followers picked up my tweets and retweeted the news, but most did not. The big-name celebrities I approached turned out to all be on the road, and most likely will miss my tweets when they finally get a chance to check their mentions. But it was the little guys who follow me that bugged me, even if I understand they could have missed my four straight hours of campaigning. Still it does bug me because most of the writers I follow (and who follow me back) never slowed down talking about their books. At a certain point, my timeline was 90% “buy my book.” No social interaction, no conversation, and no sign that they even bothered reading what other people had to say.

Before the Rohingya story, I’d had to postpone my own marketing efforts for a few days because my editor had brought to my attention an Indiegogo campaign to make survival kits for the homeless, and with 19 days left, it had zero dollars. That sat so heavily on my conscience that it wasn’t good enough to donate money. I had to drop my own sales plans and work for a complete stranger on what I considered a good cause. My self-published books will never be taken down for a publishers contract expiring, so to my mind, there’s no need to rush to make more sales. Plus, it feels good to go to that campaign’s page and see they’re up to $385 as of this writing. It feel even better than seeing one or two news sales in my Kindle reports.

For as much as we talk about the positive power of social justice, there’s a lot of people on the social networks who are only there to hawk their wares and polish their personal brand. They don’t talk to anyone who isn’t praising their product. They don’t engage anyone in a longer conversation because they don’t like “rambling tweets.” And in this way, they tune out the other people and defeat the whole point of a social network, which is to socialize.

Even for people who do make the effort, there’s a strong peer pressure demanding that they never discuss anything troubling or risk losing sales and/or followers. This peer pressure turns any social network into high school, where only the most one-dimensional platforms can be popular. Tell some jokes, talk about hobbies to build rapport, avoid heavy topics, and always be aware of your likability quotient. To do anything else is to risk your place in the social ladder.

I don’t believe this trend started with the writers, but there’s a lot of peer pressure on them to in the form of promotion advice to adopt this kind of self-presentation. If I were still employed or had books published with other folks, I’m pretty sure I’d get told on an almost daily basis not to talk about the things I do. I would be labeled a troublemaker even for posting on good causes like last night. But I’d also catch shit for my comments about other writers, because that’s not asking for change from my peers. It’s “poisoning the well.”

Writers, both fiction and non-fiction, have forgotten their roots. Before the internet came along and turned us all into brands, writers were more open about their personal views, for both good and bad causes. They wrote in op-ed columns about the things they believed in, but since papers were local, most people didn’t know where authors stood on issues. Oddly enough, now that authors have a global platform to share their views, they’re less willing to say anything that might come off as offensive.

I can understand their fears. Just the other night, I ran afoul of a group of people who decided to tell me under no uncertain terms what a vile human being I am. My comments about greenhouse gas emissions were labeled a form of racism, an extension of the “yellow menace” myth. I do not believe in this myth, and because I hoped to appease their anger, I attempted at first to talk to some of them. But when it became clear that their outrage was more important than the topic they wanted to discuss, I gave up and started blocking everyone. Which means those people will never be allowed to be a part of my online conversations. It’s unfair to them, and I wish I could avoid doing it. But when someone starts their very first tweet to me with “Listen, you piece of shit,” I’m not able to process the rest objectively. And ironically, me saying, “please don’t call me names” was labeled tone policing. With these people, nothing I say will change their minds. I am now and forever a vile racist scumbag.

I also won’t ever get sales from those people. I’ve burned maybe a hundred or so bridges in the span of a few hours. It sucks, and I wish it wasn’t so easy to do, because I have a lot to say in my books about the topics that matter to me, even if I try to dress them up with jokes and explosions and vampires and werewolves. I like to use fantasy fiction as a platform for exploring important social issues, but if someone has tuned me out because I offended them, odds are good my books will be just as offensive, if not more so. I can’t reach people who don’t want to see the world outside their preset filters.

I wish more writers would accept that you cannot go through life without making enemies. Failing that, I wish writers would at least set aside one day a week where instead of tweeting book links, they talked about a cause that was important to them. And not just to talk and lecture, but to read what their followers say, retweet that, and then pull those readers into long conversations. Just one day a week, I want writers to stop polishing their brand and let themselves be humanitarians and teachers instead of just product promoters.

I know it’s scary to burn bridges and lose potential customers, but I would rather lose a thousand sales than lose my voice. I would rather risk my chance at the big leagues of indie success than stop talking about these things that are important to me. If speaking out online and causing offense is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. High school peer pressure drove me out of school and denied me the chance to learn. I will not allow online peer pressure to push me into self-censorship for the sake of my brand.

And besides, at this point, my brand as a ranting crazy kook is firmly established. I know I’m not for everybody, so I don’t try to be everything to everyone. But I wish more writers would remember “You can’t please all of the people all of the time.” The internet doesn’t need more posing and polishing. It needs more people willing to be vulnerable, impassioned, and yes, even angry. Niceness may get you sales, but being nice doesn’t say a damn thing about who you really are under an author photo with a fake smile.