Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

All of this was sparked by Anonymous, who the left the following comment on Bonnie’s blog entry about Monica Jackson:

I would make a suggestion to Candy that if she wants to avoid bringing AAR “catfights” onto her turf, she should stop eviscerating AAR posters, something that inevitably seems to result in a deluge of ass-kissing, sycophantic comments and rampant AAR bashing from the small but dedicated cadre of SB fangirls.

This was in response to my comment explaining why Sarah and I shut down the comments to this Smart Bitch rant when it started devolving into the age-old Monica Jackson vs. AAR feud, which, as I’ve told Monica, makes me want to weep tears of blood when it comes up. It’s a long-standing battle that shows no signs of letting up, and HOT DAMN I don’t want to be caught in the middle of it. Anonymous decided to move it from the realm of the very, very specific (Monica and AAR) to the very general (AAR catfights), a leap in logic that made me go “What the fuck?” But I’ll address this point a bit later.

Further on, Anonymous goes on to say (among other things):

I’ve got nothing to hide, Candy. But the next time you ridicule an AAR poster at your site, have the courage to post a link at AAR so your victim will know exactly what you and your followers say and have the opportunity to defend herself. Not to mention, I daresay, bring along with her those who share her viewpoint. (You’re not accustomed to dissenting opinions at SB, are you?)

OK, I guess I’ll address the points in reverse order, and we’ll see if my thoughts become more organized as I go. Forgive any repetition, because I did cover some of these points in Bonnie’s blog.

The AAR messageboards have very specific rules. Most of them concern what should be discussed on which messageboard, but there are also rules about posting links. None of the boards allow links to other websites that review romance novels--I thought one of the boards did, but I was wrong. Don’t believe me?

The Reviews Board, Reader to Reader board, At The Back Fence messageboard, Potpourri Messageboard all contain this sentence in the “What Posts Don’t Belong Here” section:

Posts including links to other romance review Web sites.

This would include Smart Bitches, no? I mean, I know we provide a lot random crap like rants (a.k.a. “What sand has gotten up Candy’s vagina this morning?"), mad libs and man-titty, but a decent chunk of our content is taken up by book reviews.

But even if the book reviews didn’t exist on this site, it would never have occured to me to provide links on the message boards to my three blog entries about specific posts on the AAR messageboards (please, PLEASE note: specific posts on AAR boards != AAR).

Why?

Because that’s not the way it freakin’ works. Do newspaper columnists notify politicians about upcoming editorials and opinion pieces disagreeing with their policies before publishing their articles? Do the people at Snarkywood or Go Fug Yourself notify celebrities before shredding them to a fare-thee-well? Did the Nielsen Haydens e-mail Vox Day when they ripped him a new one for being a stupid, sexist asshole? Shit, does anyone, anywhere on the Internet warn people they disagree with that hey, they’re about to do some disagreeing?

No. The only courtesy that needs to be extended when talking about opinions you disagree with is to provide links to the source of your disagreement. By doing so:

1. It allows the people who read your article to view the source material, complete and in context; and

2. In some cases, it allows the person being disagreed with to track down the discussion via their referrer logs. This latter point doesn’t apply for messageboards and forums, of course, since posters don’t have access to referrer logs unless they’re also admins.

If you put something out there on the Internet--or hell, in any sort of medium that can be publicly accessed--you can expect someone to comment on it. Sometimes you’ll be able to track the person down, and other times you won’t. C’est la vie. Frankly, I’m curious about what a host of closed-off sources are saying about Smart Bitches, because there’ve been days when we get a flurry of referrals from sites that aren’t available to the general public, but ultimately, it’s no big deal. Sarah and I put out our opinions (though of the two of us, I’m by far more scrappy, bitchy and just all-round ornery), and people will disagree. If they don’t want to be found out, that’s their bidness.

And now on to the second point: the “SBTB hates AAR” vibe I’ve been getting.

Again, I say, “What the hell?”

I linked to three very specific posts on the AAR messageboards. All three addressed issues that made me feel like ranting--the sand in my vagina, if you will. (Sorry for the mental picture this provides you. This is the risk you run when you read this website on any regular basis.)

If there’s any doubt about how I feel about AAR, here it is now, in black and white, forever and ever amen:

1. The reviews are an invaluable resource. When there’s a book I want to check out, I go to Amazon.com first to see if the title in question has that nifty “Look Inside!” feature so I can check out an excerpt on-line. If it doesn’t, I’ll give a quick look at the Amazon reviews, then head over to AAR to see if they’ve reviewed it.

2. Smart Bitches are not trying to compete with AAR. We are trying to fill a niche in the on-line romance community. To be honest, there weren’t any romance websites out there that said “cuntmonkey,” “queefweasel” or “buttpirate,” and Sarah and I set out to correct this tragic lack.

3. In no way do we think the AAR boards are full of wacky-ass religious fundamentalist kooks. Not even close. If anything, AAR seems to lean a bit left compared to other romance messageboards. I happened to link to ONE post from someone who made what was (in my opinion) a really retarded assertion about Smart Bitches. A few of our regular commenters think differently about the AAR = full of assholes issue, but their opinions are their own, not Sarah’s or mine.

4. Here’s my opinion of the AAR boards, quoted verbatim from a comment I made: “Actually, the AAR boards are the site of some of the most interesting discussions around. The only reason I don’t visit them is because I don’t have enough friggin’ hours in the day. The few posts I’ve linked to here are not necessarily representative of the usual content on the messageboards. Yeah, there are some kooks there, but that’s sort of the unavoidable consequence of having a public messageboard on a site as big and popular as AAR.” This was in response to Bam, who commented on how AAR seems kinda scary.

But in case that’s not clear, I’ll say it YET AGAIN: AAR boards in general, awesome and full o’ much good stuff. A few people on it? Their views, as expressed on the board, chapped my ass. I’m really sorry if the impression given has been a place of scary wildnerness, but really, it’s not. The people there are mostly polite and reasonable, but sometimes a few go off the deep end (like the person who compared Robin to a member of the KKK for enjoying and defending To Have and To Hold). This is an immutable law of the universe, to wit: Some people are assholes. Oh well.

What I don’t get is how me addressing a few specific AAR posts by very specific people becomes conflated into me attacking AAR messageboards, or AAR in general. Or even how my leeriness about the AAR/Monica Jackson brouhaha translates to “AAR catfights.”

This is, in fact, directly analogous to my post about people getting their panties twisted about Smart Bitches’ alleged anti-Christian slant. I was addressing specific posts made by specific people on a public messageboard. How this translates into disdain for AAR in general, or even all of the messageboards in particular, I have no fucking clue.

Well, OK, I did say this in the heat of the moment, while feeling really fucking pissed off at Anonymous: “...I couldn’t give a flying shit about most of the posters on the AAR messageboards, especially dumbasses who make sweeping statements that can’t be backed up adequately...”

OK, that? Was a stupid asshole statement. I apologize for said stupid asshole statement. Well, not for the not giving a flying shit about dumbasses who make sweeping statements, but that applies for all dumbasses, all the time, regardless of forum. Really, I don’t know a fraction of a fraction of the people who post on AAR regularly any more, so I don’t have any opinion on them, period. I do know that some SB regulars are also AAR messageboard regulars, like Sunita and Robin (everybody join in the refrain: When I grow up, I want to be like Robin!).

I just want to nip this weird SB-against-AAR pissing content in the bud RIGHT NOW. We think the AAR site as a whole rocks, and there’s no rivalry on our part. If this imaginary contest did exist, then AAR wins, hands down. If you’re a romance reader and have to pick only ONE romance-related site to visit regularly, I recommend AAR over Smart Bitches. Seriously.

So on to another point: the “deluge of ass-kissing, sycophantic comments and rampant AAR bashing from the small but dedicated cadre of SB fangirls.”

Was there really a deluge of AAR bashing? The statistician in me wants to know. In the blog entry about AAR that generated the most dialogue (the “We Hate Christ, Not Just Man-Titty!” post), here’s a breakdown of various topics covered by the 119 comments:

Comments that straight-up agreed with Sarah and me without bashing AAR: 27
Comments about (the Church of) Man-Titty: 15
Monty Python References (mostly to man-titty): 3
Negative comparisons of AAR to SB, or negative comments about AAR: 18
Defense of AAR, or comments about AAR without bashing: 9
Negative comments about specific posts or posters on the thread I linked to (NOTE: NOT AAR): 6
Hell, and which level various among us belong to, plus how we think we got there: 19
Flying Spaghetti Monsterism: 5
Monica vs. AAR: 15
Assorted miscellany (mostly related to assorted politicians and/or the nature of religion and religious fundamentalism and/or fangirl squealing over Doug): 36

Please note that many comments overlapped in terms of topic; for instance, Robin noted that she was likened to the KKK by an AAR poster, which counted towards “negative comments about AAR,” but then in the same comment she noted that many of the people there are awesome, which counted towards “Defense of AAR.” Some of the “Monica vs. AAR” posts counted towards AAR negative comments and defense of AAR, too.

From my tally, there were more posts that talked about which level of Hell we’re going to end up in than posts that bash AAR. Unfortunately, it did seem that the defense of AAR was outweighed 2 to 1 by AAR bashing--but people DID defend AAR. I was one of them. Did it twice, actually. And two of the people who made negative comments about AAR were people who had never commented on SB before, namely ADWOFF and Sunita, so I’m not sure how they qualify as fangirls. And Monica made about half of the negative comments about AAR, and she made those comments not necessarily because she’s a fangirl of SB, but because of the bad blood in the past between her and LLB/AAR.

So anyway: deluge? What freakin’ deluge?

But much as I hate to admit it, Anonymous had a point: the issue of dissent on Smart Bitches.

Personally, I think there’s a pretty healthy amount of dissent. Check out our Chick lit rant, Sarah’s F review of The Demon’s Daughter, our post about love triangles, or hell, even Sarah’s B+ review of Time Off For Good Behavior.

But I talked to other regular readers this weekend, and they agreed that yeah, there’s been a decrease in dissent on Smart Bitches. People who disagree just don’t speak up as often any more.

And that worries me. One of the aims of Smart Bitches was to provide an open avenue of discussion, and disagreement is welcome. Rampant idiocy WILL be poked at, of course, but it’s always so much more interesting (and enriching, and educational, and oh gag me now I sound like some kind of after-school special) when people have a lively, snarky but largely polite debate.

So to encourage dissent, we’re going to try a little experiment today: The comments to this post are open only to people who disagree with us. Today is your free pass. Vent all your bile here, or express your ladylike disagreement, and do it about anything. Think we doth protest too much? Think we look ugly? Hate the layout and color scheme? Disagree violently with our reviews or rants? Think we just suck in general? Go right ahead and have your say. No repercussions, and we won’t try to rebut any of the comments made, nor will we use them as fodder for future blog entires or rants. Any non-dissenting and assent-disguised-as-dissent comments will be deleted.

The ONLY condition is that the comments can’t be anonymous. I mean, hell, make up a fake name on the spot if you have to, but if you want to mouth off, have the balls to post it under a name. We want only a name; e-mail address and website are strictly optional.

Sarah and I are interested in what people think we’re doing wrong as well as what we’re doing right, and even if we think someone is tres, tres full of shit *waves to Anonymous*, they might very well have a point.