What happens when an online crowd turns on one person: pile-ons in groups and comment threads, review bombing, and the public shaming that follows a mistake. Why the mob gets it wrong even when the target did something wrong, what it costs the person at the bottom of the pile, and what one decent voice can do to stop it.
AIWriting groups have stopped tasting the food and started inspecting the kitchen. A book should be judged on whether it's a good book. Here's what real AI misuse looks like, why a writer who does the thinking still owns the…
AIA member of a big creative writing group wrote that people who use AI deserve to be castrated. Nobody had been caught at anything, and nobody objected. The charge was using software. The sentence was mutilation.
AIMention AI in a writing group and you're a thief headed for hell. So I moved the pile-on to a hiking forum, where a beginner let an app plan her route to a waterfall. She had a wonderful day. The…
AIAn author who uses AI for research and covers, but not her writing, complained about a festival's AI cover ban. The thread ended with a stranger calling her utterly disgusting. Here's where preference ends and cruelty begins.
AIAn illustrator admitted using AI to make a headstone image for a friend's father, and the replies called him a hack and a thief. Shaming artists doesn't stop them using AI. It teaches them to lie about it.
AIA fan artist found her painting of two DC superheroes copied with AI. Here is what copyright protects in fan art, why a lawsuit rarely works, and how the thread turned on the one person who disagreed.
AIA writer admitted his AI-assisted pen-name books outsold his own work, and a writing group told him he was no author, had no ethics and would have his name spread offline. Authorship belongs to whoever owns the book, whatever tools…
AIPeople who restore or colorize old family photos with AI keep getting called slop merchants. Hollywood fought the same war over colorized movies. The fix is a label and the original, never a pile-on.
AIDoes an AI prompt really drink a bottle of water? The real numbers on AI data centers: electricity, water, power bills, emissions, jobs and taxes, with what the critics get right and what they exaggerate.
AIAn author asked whether an AI cover makes an AI book, and the thread decided the whole book must be stolen. What AI Derangement Syndrome is, what readers think, and why the only question that matters is whether the book…
AIAn author asked how to turn her comic series into a KDP paperback because ChatGPT kept changing her pictures. The thread went to war over AI. Here's the answer she needed.
Critique GroupsYou'd think writers would be kind to each other. Writing groups are some of the cruelest rooms online. Why rejection, fear and status drive it, why the polite groups don't help either, and what a good group looks like.
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