Daily Archives: November 18, 2019


How writers should deal with Internet bullying

There’s an old Internet saying: “Don’t feed the trolls.” It’s still excellent advice. When people communicate with you only to get you upset, the best answer is usually no answer.

Some authors have been subjected to online harassment by cultural segregationists. Their crime is to write something which is not permitted to their race or ethnic group. A bunch of racists piled on Amélie Wen Zhao for the offense of depicting a fantasy world in which slavery isn’t limited to people with dark skins. (There’s a real-world counterpart: China, which is where Zhao comes from.) Some of these bigots said that people with yellow skins shouldn’t write about slavery at all. They temporarily intimidated her into withdrawing her book from publication.
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