I recently joined Goodreads at the urging of several of my writer friends. At the time, I was enthused about being a part of this social media site where readers and writers share their love of the written word. Sadly, my enthusiasm was short lived, because very soon afterward I discovered something wicked that way came and it took the good out of Goodreads for me.
One of my writer friends emailed me shortly after I joined to tell me that her book was savaged by an anonymous Goodreads member (whom I shall refer to as Miss Incompetent Reviewer), who posted an anonymous, ruinously inaccurate and abusive review. Well, no surprise there. Guerrilla reviewers don’t have the guts to own their anonymous lies. These nasties hide behind cutesy user names and attack with impunity and undisguised glee.
The nasty Miss Incompetent Reviewer gave my friend’s book one lone star. I’m not sure what book she actually read because Miss Incompetent Reviewer maligned the book she reviewed for supposedly containing lurid anti-women story arcs that never appeared in my friend’s book. Miss Incompetent Reviewer then had the gall to wrap up her disparaging, off the mark review by admitting she didn’t read the entire book—only what she termed “significant blocks of it to feel comfortable with rating and commenting.”
Seriously? Miss Incompetent Reviewer felt comfortable reviewing a book she barely read? That blows my mind. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting down on my knees to give thanks that Miss Incompetent Reviewer will never review books for The New York Times Sunday Book Review. If that is what she aspires to, she had better set her sights a lot lower. A whole lot lower. Below sea level lower. To the Earth’s core lower.
I have to wonder if Miss Incompetent Reviewer could actually be Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer. She may well get off on smearing reputations to cause others pain. I tried to imagine what she says to herself when she wakes every morning. Does she say, “What should I do to make someone’s life miserable today?” Maybe she says, “I want to hurt someone where she lives today.” Or she might say, “I will utterly destroy someone today, crush her like a bug, make her wish she was never born, and get my Troll cronies to pile on too.” I imagine she says all three while cackling and rubbing her wart-covered hands together over her cauldron.
As I write this, I’m still trying to fathom how Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer can be so cruel to another human being, a person she may never have met and doesn’t even know. What demon drives her to do this? Is it envy? What ever it may be, it’s senseless. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it.
Oh, hold on. I just remembered something I once read. . .
I’m back. Something about Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer’s perverse behavior triggered my memory. I’m holding a book I read about seven or eight years ago. The book’s title is The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us by Martha Stout, Ph.D. (Broadway Books, New York, 2005). I just pulled it off my bookshelf, and I’m skimming through it to see if what I suspect might be true.
FYI: in this book, Dr. Stout reveals that one in twenty-five ordinary Americans secretly has no conscience and can do anything at all without feeling guilty. If you haven’t read this book, please do. It is an excellent crash course in sociopathic behavior—the behavior of those who are without conscience and feel no guilt or remorse for their anti-social actions, are unable to feel normal emotions such as love, joy, empathy or sympathy but have learned to fake them, and to whom truth and lies are interchangeable. Author Jonathan Kellerman described The Sociopath Next Door as: “A chillingly accurate portrayal of evil—the decent person’s guide to indecency.” Forewarned is forearmed.
Eureka! I found the mother lode. I discovered Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer on page 76 of The Sociopath Next Door. Her perverse behavior brands her a covetous sociopath. Dr. Stout describes the covetous sociopath in alarming detail:
“ . . . when lack of conscience and covetousness occur together in the same individual, a fascinating and frightening picture emerges. Since it is simply not possible to steal and have for oneself the most valuable ‘possessions’ of another person—beauty, intelligence, success, a strong character—the covetous sociopath settles for besmirching or damaging enviable qualities in others so that they will not have them, either, or at least not be able to enjoy them so much.
“ . . . The covetous sociopath thinks that life has cheated her somehow, has not given her nearly the same bounty as other people, and so she must even the existential score by robbing people, by secretly causing destruction in other lives. She believes she has been slighted by nature, circumstances, and destiny, and that diminishing other people is her only means of being powerful. Retribution, usually against people who have no idea that they have been targeted, is the most important activity in the covetous sociopath’s life, her highest priority.”
Just reading those passages made my flesh crawl. Dr. Stout’s description fits Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer like a proverbial glove.
I suspect there is good reason to believe that Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer is a covetous sociopath as described above by Dr. Stout. Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer gives every indication of being a wannabe writer who does not have the talent to create, so she settled instead for the capacity to destroy. Her modus operandi is to post anonymous inaccurate and abusive reviews of books for the twisted satisfaction of destroying the reputations and careers of published authors, simply because a career as a published author is denied Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer by lack of talent and imagination. If Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer cannot succeed as a writer, then no other writer may be allow to succeed either. This would be sad if it were not so terribly sick.
Until Goodreads puts an end to anonymous reviews, Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer and her Troll Cronies will continue to take more and more of the good out of Goodreads. Eventually, all the legitimate members will depart in disgust leaving only Miss Sadistic Incompetent Reviewer and the Trolls—and then there will be nothing good about Goodreads, and the domain name will have to change to NoGoodreads.com.