1/ Many YA Twitter blowups are not organic expressions of anger, but are rather coordinated in closed backchannel settings beforehand. Here's a post from KidLit Alliance, a Facebook group, organizing people against Blood Heir. "This is where the plot to take down Zhao began,"

2/ claims the person who leaked this to me, referring to Amelie When Zhao. (I have no way of confirming whether this is true.) KLA is a well-known closed group with many members so this isn't top-secret or anything, but it's still fascinating watching toxic YA people in their

3/natural habitat. One thing that stands out is the presence of race-specific codes of behavior with regard to who is allowed to comment, and what happens if you disagree with an accusation of bigotry. Namely, you risk getting publicly shamed and kicked out of the group in front

4/ of countless influential writers and editors and agents.

That's what happened here: Black (not the leaker, I should be clear) expressed skepticism of the idea that if a book doesn't contain characters of a given identity it is bigoted, so Red (OP) immediately booted her.

5/ I do think it's important for editors and other decision-makers to understand that just because their inbox or mentions are suddenly flooded with anger, that doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong. The anger germinates in a very weird hothouse environment where disagreement

6/ isn't allowed, and where agreement with (often exaggerated or fabricated) claims of 'harm' brings with it social currency and group standing.

7/ Oh and full disclosure a member of this group posted the email address of a Tablet editor in response to this piece (which no one has pointed out any errors in) in an apparent attempt to pressure Tablet into not covering this subject anymore. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-a-twitter-mob-destroyed-a-young-immigrant-female-authors-budding-career

8/ Basically anyone can accuse any book of anything, and the other members of the group will quickly indicate their agreement, despite the fact that they have never read the book and therefore have no way of knowing whether the accusations are fair.

9/ The point is that these outrages are sparked not by normal YA readers but by adults with very specific and esoteric standards -- "gendered magic systems that leave no room for trans folks" -- who have a strange and stilted and childlike way of talking: "I have an angery" etc.

10/ When publishers cave to this strange clan, in other words, they are responding not to what readers want, but to a very strange group of people with a specific set of esoteric concerns and a less developed sense of morality and nuance than the average, say, 14-year-old reader.