I think she is trying to scrub her HP Fandom past- dropping the “i” from her name so initial Google searches don’t bring up her Fandom past and the Plagiarism debacle. Barely any mention of HP on her Wiki page, and in an interview with her dad, she is described as an “occasional” fanfic writer, really demeaning what she did in the years of 2000-2006 (she wrote a MASSIVE triology based on the Harry Potter Books, it was probably over a thousand pages by the time she finished and it basically launched her career).

It’s a shame that she’s trying to whitewash what she did in the past and trying to garner sympathy with this post. Some people are just gullible enough to believe her.

The only real solution, I think, is for the bullies themselves to think about their actions and take responsibility. But no one can really be forced to change their attitudes. It has to be done voluntarily.

In the absence of any motivation (other than an impossibly unlikely philosophical epiphany or existential crisis), I can’t see any reason why they would examine themselves or make any changes.

1) A simple Google search of Cassandra Clare does not turn up all sorts of leads to the things you’re talking about. 

2) If Xeni were to run across any of those stories, they’re generally told in such a way as to be totally incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t already know all about them AND tend to make the people complaining about Cassandra Clare look a little crazy (or, at least, not like the world’s most trustworthy sources)

3) Although she was caught plagiarizing fan fiction (in 2005?), I don’t recall ever hearing that she did that again. And, besides that, the vast majority of the Cassie Claire Mythos really honestly can be summed up as “We don’t like this chick so we will find things we do not like about her.” 

Basically, I don’t understand how you could expect Xeni to reasonably come to the conclusion that Cassandra Clare is wrong and the people who don’t like her are right. 

It’s just an unfortunate and ugly facet of being a human being – really we just need systems in place to deal with it. Support/mitigation for the victims and rehabilitation (for want of a better word) for the bullies. I think this mostly applies to more extreme cases though – the smaller scale stuff just chalks up to having basic respect for each other, so as you describe, more of a societal shift.

I certainly don’t have the answers though.

The only real solution, I think, is for the bullies themselves to think about their actions and take responsibility. But no one can really be forced to change their attitudes. It has to be done voluntarily.

But I also don’t want to fall in the trap myself of excusing or downplaying bullying of any type. Yes, it’s complicated and difficult to solve and ultimately not preventable, but that’s not a reason to excuse it. I think dealing with bullying requires a broad societal shift in our attitudes, but I can’t make anyone else change their attitudes. I can take responsibility for my own, but it’s a start.

Telling the victim to just ignore it is telling the victim they deserve it. It’s telling the victim they’re flawed. It’s telling the victim that the situation is RIGHT, not WRONG.

And that’s bullshit.

Do your homework. This woman does not deserve your sympathy. I have read the so called hate blogs, and while the spelling is shitty and the anonymous submitters occasionally dumb, there is NOTHING scary/threatening/anti-Semitic about them. She just doesn’t like it when people call her out on her slut shaming and perpetuation of rape culture and past life as a known plagiarist. No one mocked her body or threatened to pay her a little visit, as she claims. As for her legal name, it’s out there, it’s not like these little bloggers had do to much work to find it. Hell, she links to an article with her name in it.

Disappointing when boing boing doesn’t perform a simple google search and conduct some basic due diligence.

People are fucked up.

most of the perpetrators are 14 year old boys.

And yet, so many of them turn out to be middle-aged professionals when exposed.

You can ignore emails with slurs in capital letters as the subject line.

You shouldn’t have to. That’s the second rule of Bully Club: The victim just needs to toughen up.

Either way it must be horrible, and I wouldn’t like to insinuate that it’s no big deal just because it’s virtual.

It also sounds like they setup blogs where they write abusive or fake posts about her, which real fans come across, and then confront her about.

So they were/are definitely finding ways of getting responses, and attention.

You can’t ignore someone beating on you in real life.  You can ignore emails with slurs in capital letters as the subject line.

Pro’s and cons.

But if you were sending hate messages to me everyday and not getting a response how would you even know I’d read them or not?

It’s not apple’s and pears, but it’s also not quite the same either.

And yet Cassandra Clare isn’t in school, she’s an adult. Now there’s hordes of adult bullying – bigots going after minorities, abusive bosses or spouses, and so on. But have sustained, personally directed attacks from strangers really been so pervasive?

All I know for sure is that it’s not my experience, though seeing how often K-12 is the parallel, I suspect it’s not quite so common. But it sure seems to happen to a lot of adults, particularly women, on-line.

Sorry to hear your awful experience in school, by the way. :(

They ESCALATE.

Until they do.

The bullies on the bus? When they saw me refuse to react to their verbal attacks and bury my nose in a book instead, or pretend to be asleep? They did not go “oh, well, I guess she’s not going to play, I shall move on with my life.” No, they went “How dare that little b**** act like I’m not here” and BEAT ME ABOUT THE HEAD REPEATEDLY WITH A TEXTBOOK.

Yeah. Eventually get tired of punching pillows? Maybe. But the thing is, I am not a pillow. And they never seemed to get bored with punching me.

On the internet? I’m not sure what the equivalent escalation would be from flaming; spamming? Hacking? In-person threats or intimidation? 4-chan pizza delivery? But I’m sure it CAN get worse. Because in my experience, bullies do NOT get bored. They are very, very good at finding ways to stay amused.

Though I’m somewhat playing devil’s advocate with this reply… Back in RL, at least in my personal experience in a public school environment, bullies despite not being anonymous still could (and recent news suggests still can) bully with little risk to themselves (the bullies are known, but how often do they actually get punished?), and clearly could and can find like-minded twits to show off to, despite a lack of either anonymity or internet.

But we’re arguing past each other I suspect. RL or quasinymous internet situations, this is a serious societal problem that needs proper addressing.

I’m just skeptical that the internet has made it easier to bully, or worse of a problem.