Social media and the desperate snatch for the tiniest bit of power

Let me tell you about the 10% Bag of Dicks

Dear Writer,

Back when I was first starting out, maybe two or three books in, I got a bad review. I don’t remember much specifically about this review, other than it felt like a punch in the gut. I’d gotten universally positive reviews from the professional reviewers—Booklist, Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, etc.—but this was from a real reader, on Amazon, and it was a dickish review. The reviewer hated me. Not just me as a writer, but me as a person. They hated the book. They hated everything about me, everything that was tangentially related to me.

They hated.

At first, of course… punch to the gut. Then there was a day or two of it drifting in and out of my consciousness; like, I’d be fine, pouring milk for my kids’ cereal and all of a sudden, a phrase from that awful review would slice through my consciousness and I’d be gutted again. I would worry that this one dickhead was right, when all the other positive reviews I’d received were clearly wrong. This reviewer lived rent-free in my head for weeks.

Around that time, I was on the phone with my agent and casually mentioned it, and she said, “If you’re not getting reviews like those, you’re not reaching enough readers.”

That was both comforting and not. Basically, the premise is, there is a certain amount of the population—let’s call them the 10% Bag of Dicks—that are out there, just actively trying to hurt people, and if you’ve reached that bedrock of assholery, then you know you’ve reached a certain level of success, the canary in the dick mine, so to speak.

I believe social media has proven my agent absolutely right.

Last week, I was scrolling through my TikTok feed and I saw this post by Elyse Myers, who is a big star, hugely successful, and just a lovely human being from what I can tell.

Warning: Watching this may hit your rage button. At least, it did mine.

@elysemyers @elysemyers ♬ original sound - Elyse Myers

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To sum up for anyone who can’t watch, Elyse recently learned how to style her curly hair, so it’s all bouncy and full and awesome looking. She was proud of this. She shared it on social media. A few of these people took shots at her, told her they didn’t like her hair, and someone said, “You look like a prepubescent boy.”

And Elyse cried. She shared on TikTok how much this had hurt her, and apologized to the people who didn’t like her hair. There was another similar video recently where a woman made a video, crying and apologizing for being ugly, a “fact” (it’s not; she’s not ugly) she was made hip to by the 10% Bag of Dicks. I can’t find that one, because if you Google “woman apologizes for being ugly on TikTok” you get so many entries, it’s impossible to find the specific one you’re looking for.

But here’s a new rule: We do not apologize to the 10% Bag of Dicks.

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Space is limited for my Year of Writing Magically workshop, and applications are flying in; be sure to apply today!

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Like pretty much everything with humans, this behavior is about power. Elyse Myers has 6.1 million followers; she’s a huge success. And then there’s this weaselly little human sitting in the dark, hating themselves and their lives, and because they feel like they have no power, they reach out to slap someone so much more successful than themselves, and they make her cry. And that act, through some kind of dark psychological Rube Goldberg machine of dicks that I can’t begin to understand, makes them feel good.

It makes them feel powerful.

And you know what? They are.

They are powerful.

Because we give them power. Every time we apologize for being ugly, or fat, or for having curly hair for fuck’s sake, we give them the power they crave. I never responded to that person who hated me so much for my book review, they never knew what they did to me, but that was before social media. That was before one shitty comment on Twitter could make a thread go viral, before you could take 1.5 seconds to write a shitty comment on a video and make Elyse Myers cry.

If you’re reading this, chances are fair to middlin’ you’re planning on creating something that will be out in the world for the 10% Bag of Dicks to find. Maybe you’re already doing that; maybe you’ve already been the victim of a 10% Bag of Dicks fly-by.

Here are the rules for how we deal with the 10% Bag of Dicks.

1. We allow ourselves our response. When someone hits you with a stick, it hurts. Why they hit you or how you think it might be your fault is not important right now. First, you have to process the hurt, and you do that with your safe people, in private.

2. That process takes as long as it takes, but once it’s done, you delete the comment and block the commenter. Remember that they are a small person living a small life, and they are trying to use you to feel better about themselves. Send a prayer out into the universe that they find a good therapist.

3. Then you forget that person exists and go on about your business. Their opinion does not matter, because it’s not even their real opinion. It’s just what life is like for someone who lives in the 10% Bag of Dicks. I’m sorry for them, but they’re not worth my time.

Now, the first knee-jerk response I hear to this, as it has always been my knee-jerk response, is, “But what if they’re right? What if I am ugly/fat/horrid and I don’t listen to any criticism because I just can’t take it and then I never get better and I become one of those people who can’t take feedback?”

I’m gonna unpack that one next week. Stay tuned. This is gonna be a series.

But for now, just know that the 10% Bag of Dicks are out there, waiting for us to get upset and cry and give them their little dopamine hit of power. Once we do that, we feed them, and we create more of them who see on social media how easy it is to grab a tiny hit off the power bong, if you’re only willing to live inside the 10% Bag of Dicks.

Some people will make that trade, and while I don’t know why, I am well aware that this is the reality of our new world. I am sorry for them, but they are not me, they are not you, and they are their own problem.

Everything,

L