Beyond Selidor

I think one of the most horrifying things is that the mob feels it's truly well intentioned and that its actions are justified.

That was one of the most disturbing elements of this whole affair, and it's something I've come to believe is the common denominator in a lot of these Twitter pile ons. Whatever the instigators tell themselves, and however much pain or righteous rage they feel, subconsciously an attitude has developed that that bullying is acceptable if it's directed at the right target. There's a lot of lofty talk of 'punching up,' as if they're out there taking the fight to a bunch of far-right extremists, but it appears to me that in fact in the majority of these cases, the mob is haranguing a (marginalised) newcomer to the field — someone at the bottom of the hierarchy, and outside their social circles.

I've seen this case with Fall discussed elsewhere, and the conclusion was that her very anonymity — minimal biography, no social media presence, unknown to the movers and shakers of 'progressive' SFF — painted the target on her back, because so many people in this community rely on contextual clues about the author (demographics, who their friends are on Twitter, who's promoting their story) to actually interpret the author's work, rather than the work itself. So they were condemning not the short story itself (even if that's what they claimed), but, subconsciously, the fact that the author didn't sit somewhere within their observable hierarchy, and it made them uncomfortable, and incapable of interpreting the short story.