Sunday, July 19, 2020

I Am Very Outraged About That Goodreads Thing

I Am Very Outraged About That Goodreads Thing Late last week, Goodreads published an announcement that they were changing review policies and removing author bookshelves and also went through and deleted a bunch of reviews. I know this because a lot of people on my Twitter feed had some things to say about it. It was a bit of a  kerfuffle  if you dont mind me throwing in the parlance of the young people like that. Now I grant you, Im not sure what this solution means, because its to a problem that I dont understand, on a website I dont use a whole lot but I am really outraged about it. This is unbelievable! How  dare Goodreads presume to march into well, log into (Im not sure how it works actually maybe they walk into somewhere first I dont know) their own website and makes changes to these sorts of things! These sorts of things which a lot of people use to communicate opinions about other sorts of things and other people to each other! This is  exactly what we were all warned was going to happen in that one dystopian novel about the fascist future we all read in school probably! Is nowhere safe anymore? Its this sort of meddling that is destroying the book-reading world. This stuff, and Twitter. And reality television. And  Hulkmania!  Is that still a thing? I dont have cable. Anyway this is  just what Jonathan Franzen was talking about in that one article which caused a bit of a ruckus if youll pardon the slang, shawty, in which he said that technology and things were destroying our ability to read men who write essays in German. This solution thingy to that problemy-bit, its not going to work. The community will just work around it and create other Goodreads things that do a different thing and other problems will happen! Goodreads will eliminate those and soon there will be nowhere left for the common rabble to talk about books and well all go back to reading the opinions of the New York Times Book Review and thats not such a bad thing. I mean thats a very bad thing. Thats why Im so outraged. I hope Goodreads sees the error in their ways and changes their solution to that one problem so that we can solve that problem with a different thing that doesnt make that original thing a worse thing. Frankly if this keeps up we might all leave and go over to that other site that does a thing like Goodreads does but a little bit differently. Unless  they do something awful too and then well be  outraged at them as well! I have to go lie down. ____________________________ Sign up for our newsletter to have the best of Book Riot delivered straight to your inbox every week. No spam. We promise. To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, , and subscribe to the Book Riot podcast in iTunes or via RSS. So much bookish goodnessall day, every day.