THE DOCTOR IS IN

ON COMPASSION, VICTIM-SCOLDING, AND BAD AMAZON REVIEWS

Several years ago, my friend Jean was violently mugged by a gang of teenagers. He told another friend about his traumatic experience, and her immediate reaction was, "Oh, imagine the deprivation those poor children must have suffered, to have to commit such an act!" He told me that her response made him feel mugged a second time.

After intense email exchanges with blog readers and friends, I get that I am guilty of re-mugging a number of readers, by suggesting that they try to muster compassion and support for Saboteuse, who represents not just an anonymous attacker, but a backstabbing colleague. That was very far from my intention, but I can see that my response was insensitive, and I apologize.

As a therapist, part of my role has to be to empathize with the "client," meaning anyone who looks to me, as a professional, for help. It is impossible to help people if they feel judged and blamed. I have learned that the act of listening and attempting to understand, in itself, generates empathy, even for some of my clients who have been violent criminals. It is important to me to distinguish between disapproving of the act and disapproving of the actor; to hate the sin while loving the sinner, as Gandhi is supposed to have advised.

I have also found that this empathic listening technique works well for me when I modify it for use in fiction writing. I will often write the first draft of a story from one character's point of view, then write it again through the eyes of another character, and so on. Even if I return to the original POV in the finished story, this exercise in identifying with different viewpoints enriches my appreciation of the complexities of the situation I'm working to depict.The German playwright Friedrich Hebbel said, "In great drama, everyone is right." I find that the closer I can come to this ideal in my own work, the more satisfied I am with the result.

However.

The importance of summoning and maintaining compassion is one reason that therapists are advised to keep a healthy emotional distance from their clients. It is hard to maintain perspective when one is emotionally involved in a painful situation. And if poetry originates in "emotion recollected in tranquility," as Wordsworth claimed, "tranquility" is an important factor in the equation. I apparently skipped over this part when I asked readers to empathize with the attacker.

My own experience with Amazon reviews is so puny--my book only garnered eight reviews; one was lukewarm and the other seven were raves by (real) friends--that I think I didn't fully take into consideration the depth of pain and anger this type of betrayal can cause, especially when perpetrated by a supposed ally.

I had planned to write this in brief in the Comments section. But then, on Sunday, I attended a wonderful reading by Jami Attenberg and Wendy McClure. As the "finale" they performed a "Battle of Bad Amazon Reviews," in which they took turns reading the worst reviews their books had received. It was hilarious, in large part because each reader seemed to take on the personality of the reviewer, reciting the review with pitch-perfect disdain, contempt, or revulsion. It occurred to me that this might be a variation on the "empathic listening" technique--that taking on the reviewer's persona and point of view might be a helpful way to exorcise the pain of a malicious review.

I asked Jami and Wendy to comment on this idea for my column. I'm reproducing their responses below, rather than excerpting relevant quotes, because their comments, like the rest of their writing, are both insightful and hysterically funny--and in atonement for last week, I'd like to provide us all with a deep, cathartic laugh.

Wendy:

Well, my attitude on unkind reader reviews is that it comes with the territory of being an author in 2009. I don't go out of my way to find them (I don't look myself up on Good Reads, for example), but I accept that they might turn up in web searches or on Amazon. You can hope they won't happen to you, but they happen all the time—to other writers, to good writers, to good books. I suppose it helped that I'd read an awful lot of withering Amazon reviews of other authors' books before I had to read my own reviews. Eventually I started to notice that the people who post angry one-star screeds tend to fit certain profiles, such as:

1.) The Wrong Customer: this person doesn't usually read books that are anything remotely like your book. Like if you knew her personally, you sure as heck wouldn't have given her your own book to read. God knows what kind of wrong turn or misunderstanding led her to pick up your book, but she did, and her anger is the blind rage of one who has gotten lost. She needs something to blame and of course she'll blame your book. And you.

2.) The People's Court Plaintiff: this person likes to think of Amazon as a sort of literary tribunal where he can expose authors of books he doesn't like as lousy, lousy frauds. But he can't do anything to make your book not exist or have your fancy author license revoked, so really, he's like those people who go on The People's Court and who need some token measure of satisfaction.

3.) Bitter Enemy of Everything Your Book Represents: I have to say, I am always a little proud when I get one of these folks. Somehow your book ticks off this person so profoundly that it becomes a galvanizing force in her life, and her horrible, horrible review of your book is a manifesto of sorts. As painful as it is to be on the receiving end of these reviews, it is grimly comforting to know that they're written with passion.

4.) Personal-Attack-Perpetrating Pig: these people are just passive-aggressive turds whose reviews violate Amazon's terms of service. Everyone sees them for the jerks that they are.

I wouldn't say I exactly feel compassion for any of these people, but by profiling them I can take myself out of the equation—these reviews are just things that people do as part of their nature, and my book just happened to be the catalyst. The blog software on my site Poundy.com has a special feature that randomly inserts text into the title bar at the top of the web page (you can go to the site and refresh the page to watch it change), and I've set it to display phrases from some of the more vitriolic Amazon reviews I've gotten—things like, "A terrible sense of humor, a horrible personality" and "Another in the long line of gen x navel gazing authors."  Because really, as much as some of those phrases made me wince at first, they're really funny after awhile. I just started claiming them for myself as punchlines, which did a lot to take away their sting. And exchanging lousy reviews with Jami at our readings have the same effect as well.

Jami:

Your columns seem to be a different sort of thing than what Wendy and I were talking about, because your columns sound so specific, someone knowing someone else and trying to hurt them.  Whereas I think my reviews were from random strangers, although if they were from someone I knew that would make it even funnier to me.  Ooh, you burned me on the internet!  What a bad-ass!

I can't speak for Wendy here, although I know the same is true for her that we have both been online a *long* time.  I've been blogging sine 1998.   So I am keenly familiar with people writing mean things about other people on the internet, the kind of wackos that do it, or even the normal people who do it, because they are caught up in some kind of weird anonymous frenzied power that they feel the internet gives them.   So for me, these reviews are a part of what you get on the internet. One day you get people saying nice things about you on their blog which might sell you five books that day, and the next day you get cranks making themselves feel powerful by slamming you on Amazon.  I'm of course - and please do note this if you use any of this - not saying all negative reviews are written by cranks. I'm sure I deserve my share of negative reviews. But we picked the ones that were kind of out of hand and extreme and clearly not written to be constructive in any way.  The ones that felt either deeply personal (and thus had nothing to do with our work and everything to do with the person who was writing the review) or casually cruel (a toss-away comment, how could one take that seriously?) If those were the only reviews I had ever gotten I guess I would be worried, but I've gotten enough good ones to encourage me to keep going with my work.  And anyway, I don't think I could stop writing if I tried! :)

When we read them out loud to an audience, we were saying: How could someone say something so mean on the internet? Isn't that hilarious?  But they do, all the time.  The night we read people kept telling us we were so brave for doing it, but I didn't feel brave at all.  I  was just trying to entertain people. Even if a fraction of what we read out loud was true (and maybe we should be a little embarrassed, but I don't embarrass easily), it was worth it just to get the laugh. 

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. Her book,  Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007) is now available in bookstores. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Comments

[Richard]

Dr. Sue, I don't think you are "guilty of 're-mugging" readers wounded by Amazon reviews. Your discussion of imagining what makes "Saboteuse" tick seemed both compassionate and sensible.

(I was mugged and beaten eight years ago this week outside my apartment, and I needed psychological help afterward - with a diagnosis of acute stress disorder or something. Nevertheless, I did think about how cruddy the lives of my teenaged muggers must have been and I did feel compassion for them as I worked through my feelings about the incident. Over the years, I have thought about them and hope they have better lives now.)

Anyway, Wendy's and Jami's comments were great. But you know, being physically attacked is not like being "attacked" on Amazon, and anyone who writes a book or is in the public eye at all needs to develop a tough hide, or whatever metaphor a better writer than I would care to use. The "victimization" is very different, and writing a book invites criticism.

Indeed, that is why some of us write. As I said before, I welcome anyone to go on Amazon and say something as mean as possible about me and my books!

[Douglas Clegg]

Great column, Dr. Sue!

On the other hand, my advice for writers still stands:

Don't read the online reviews, particularly on Amazon.

[Susan O'Doherty]

Thanks, both of you. Richard, I keep meaning to post those nasty reviews of your books--thanks for the reminder!

And, Doug, great advice. Several people have told me, though, that even if you never read reviews, helpful "friends" will be sure to tell you about them.

[Paul Elwork]

Thanks for another great column! I am learning that there are lots of worthwhile blogs and such out there--like this one. But let's face it, the blogosphere and Internet in general is loaded with lots and lots of small-minded twerps trying to nurse their own feelings of inadequacy by attacking anyone they can, with any provocation, real or imagined. It's actually quite pitiful. Ignore them, folks--they are beneath your notice.

[YA Author]

Thank you for this column. I stumbled on it this morning and it helped me a lot. I'm an author, currently getting cyber-bullied from a guy who picked up my book (written for 10/11 year old girls, I might add) and hated it so much that he's launched a full on cyber attack. He's posted YouTube videos, had his followers write me nasty letters and comments on my blog (with vile things like me only getting published because I must give good head), and completely destroying my Amazon listing by having people write horrible reviews about the book and me as an author. Then he urges people to mark all the bad reviews as "helpful" and the good reviews as "unhelpful" - pushing my good reviews to the bottom of the list.

I don't really know what to do. I don't want to antagonize him further, only to have him ramp up his attack. I'm hoping eventually he'll get bored and lay off.

In the meantime, he's getting tons of attention and probably feeling pretty good about himself right now. I'm sure he's not thinking of the fact that I'm waking up each morning, seeing this stuff, and trying not to cry.

I really wonder if internet trolls know how emotionally hurtful they are or if they're just so caught up in the attention and feeling of power that they don't think about the fact that there's a real person behind the book.

Anyway, your post made me feel a little better, so thank you!