Chapter 17
I’m not all that familiar with the forum Reddit, but I know it’s popular for its communities, where you can find people who share an interest in the same topic.
I’ve dipped in and out before when there were scandals in romancelandia but it’s not visual like Instagram and so I’ve never really spent much time on it.
I open the app and type Tia Amboro’s name and find a few comments here and there, nothing inflammatory like I figured Books with Bethany meant.
Could those more damaging posts have been deleted?
Maybe Tia’s lawyers are getting ahead of anything libellous because there is a distinct lack of talk on this site about Tia and her book Bang, Bang!
considering it’s storming the eBook charts and people on the internet generally have a lot of opinions.
Just thinking about the threat that I’ll be hearing from her legal team is enough to make me sweat but so far I haven’t heard a peep.
Somehow that’s more concerning as if they’re taking their time to put an irrefutable case together against me.
I try a few other searches which come up with nothing.
I finally type my own name and am startled when an entire community dedicated to it pops up.
The thing with these forums is, you never know quite what the tone will be. Whether they’ll be filled with people for or against and if the moderators manage to keep talk civil.
I give myself a silent pep talk for courage, worried I’m going to be faced with a whole forum of people denigrating me. I click into it.
r/Harpersbookhaven
This moderated sub is to discuss claims made by Bookstagrammer Harper Morgan from Harper’s Book Haven about author Tia Amboro and her debut release Bang, Bang!
BlahblahblahBoise: Honestly, I think Harper is right about Tia Amboro. The book is AI or satire. One or the other. It can’t be real.
Catch22always: I’ve never seen the internet come for someone like they did with Harper.
They were bot/fake accounts, for sure. If you looked closely (can’t now, her page has been deactivated) it wasn’t the Bookstagram community out for blood, it was mostly from new accounts/accounts with zero follower count.
Gives credence to the fact that Harper might have been onto something and Tia (or whoever our mystery writer is) didn’t like it and retaliated with the online onslaught. Thoughts?
FauxLives: I noticed that too! Dummy accounts and lots of them.
I thought maybe it was people making new accounts so it couldn’t be connected to them, but now you say that…
makes more sense Tia wouldn’t want Harper’s claims to get any traction, especially if they’re true, right?
What’s the consensus here? Do we think Tia is a fake?
Unreliablenarrator708: Have you read the book?
It’s definitely not human written. In some ways it feels more like a joke.
Harper was either brave or stupid to call it out, but I’m hearing a lot of whispers on Bookstagram that she’s got support, but no one knows quite how to act because no one has ever really spoken up like that before (albeit accidentally) and got cancelled over it.
As for the author, her protestations are convincing, so it seems they’re at a stalemate.
I feel for the Bookstagram community because they’re the ones who dedicate their time to sharing the love of books and don’t they have a right to voice their concerns if they don’t want to support AI-written garbage? It’s a tough one.
Ohsodramatic: But therein lies the problem. What if Harper is wrong and done untold damage to Tia?
True_Crime_allthetime007: but what if she’s right and everyone has just been sucked into a big con?
A small thrill runs through me. While it’s not full-blown support, or an army of amateur internet sleuths on my side, it seems that there are some people open to the fact that I could be correct about Tia.
But the same issue still stands – how do we prove it?
Is there even a way without Tia admitting it? And let’s face it, why would she?
Maybe Lily is right and I should let the dust settle.