good morning bitches, happy friday
Good morning bitches! I originally intended to kick off this edition with my favorite segment of roasting articles that supply the best fall instagram captions, but then this article happened:
If you’ve heard anyone talking online or IRL about kidney donations and group chats getting leaked, they’re most likely referring to this absolute RIDE of a story. This one by Robert Kolker has it all—gossip, lawsuits, Facebook groups, and white saviorism. This is the definition of good ol’ fashion niche drama we know and love here at good morning bitches. It’s a solid 45-minutes-to-an-hour read, so I’m going to do my best to summarize what the hell is going on.
These are our two players:
Dawn Dorland: unpublished writer/teacher who decides she wants to donate a kidney to a complete stranger out of the goodness of her heart (or, so she says)
Sonya Larson: a published writer who is added to Dawn’s Facebook group among other fellow writers that documents Dawn’s kidney donation process
Neither are fully innocent in this situation. I will be using the red flag emoji 🚩 to mark every instance that they deserve a serious side eye.
So, Dawn’s got this Facebook group, right? Dawn would post about her donation journey, which is a move I don’t really get. If you’re truly donating your kidney altruistically, why do you need to make sure a group of your peers know you’re doing it? She eventually tries to spin this contradiction into a quest to “raise awareness” which I guess I’ll allow. But if you’re trying to raise awareness, wouldn’t you post it to all your Facebook friends, not a small group?
I digress.
Dawn doesn’t get much interaction from certain members of the group. We later learn that this really, really bothers her. Like, this is an email she sends one of them:
I think you’re aware that I donated my kidney this summer. Right?
…she then wonders “If she really thought it was that great, why did she need reminding that it happened?” 🚩 If this is where most peoples’ minds go surrounding social media posts, I have seriously pissed off a lot of you.
About a year after donating her kidney, she receives a comment on Facebook, asking if she was the source of inspiration for Sonya’s new story about a kidney donation.
*record scratch* What about a short story???
Turns out Sonya was workshopping a piece called “The Kindest” about a woman who donates her kidney and expects praise and accolades. Soooo all this time Sonya was a member of Dawn’s Facebook group, she was really doin’ research! 🚩 Here’s where the titular “bad art friend” concept comes into play—is it off-limits to base your writing off your friends’ experiences? Most writers would say no. After all, art imitates life, inspiration is everywhere, etc. etc.
Dawn, however…is not most writers.
She emails Sonya.
Hey, I heard you wrote a kidney-donation story. Cool! Can I read it?
Dawn, I’m gonna be real: that is the most transparent “I know what the fuck you did and I’m not happy” email I’ve ever read. Sonya immediately launches into the “this is a story merely ~inspired~ by your kidney donation” narrative. Dawn didn’t buy it. She replies.
It’s the interpersonal layer that feels off to me, Sonya. … You seemed not to be aware of my donation until I pointed it out. But if you had already kicked off your fictional project at this time, well, I think your behavior is a little deceptive. At least, weird.
Then Sonya comes back with THIS dagger of a statement:
Before this email exchange, I hadn’t considered that my individual vocal support (or absence of it) was of much significance.
🚩
Girl, please. Dawn added you to her Facebook group, clearly she cared about your opinion. Now, should Dawn have expected anything from Sonya? No. That is a 🚩 for me, too. But Sonya can’t sit there and pretend like she had noOoOoOo idea Dawn cared what she thought. If someone adds you to a group about their medical situation, the least you can do is acknowledge the fact that they want you to know about it.
At this point, we’re in the thick of grey area. It may be jarring to have your personal life inspire a short story, but you can’t really be mad about it. After all, no crimes were committed, and we don’t know how much Sonya’s story resembles Dawns life….yet.
*fast forward some tedious back and forth between them and a couple of lawsuits*
Sonya’s story involves a letter that the donor writes to the recipient. Dawn had also written a letter to her recipient, which she posted in the fb group. This in itself isn’t much proof of anything—people write those kind of letters all the time. Until….Dawn finds an audio version early draft of Sonya’s story online, which is almost word for word what she posted on Facebook. 🚩 The draft was written before Dawn and Sonya had that back and forth about the ~inspiration~ over email— which means Sonya likely knew she was in tricky territory with the letter and so changed the wording.
At this point, you could still claim that it was merely inspiration. I guess. Idk, I’m not a lawyer. That debate doesn’t even MATTER though, because a nice piece of evidence came out of this next horror twist:
Guess what got subpoenaed.
Sonya’s group chats.
Including this damning message about The Letter™:
Sonya: I think I’m DONE with the kidney story but I feel nervous about sending it out b/c it literally has sentences that I verbatim grabbed from Dawn’s letter on FB. I’ve tried to change it but I can’t seem to — that letter was just too damn good. I’m not sure what to do … feeling morally compromised/like a good artist but a shitty person.
🚩🚩🚩
Uh… “literally has sentences that I verbatim grabbed from Dawn’s letter” = plagiarism. Also you feel “like a good artist” ???? You literally just admitted that you are incapable of writing original words that sound as good as a Facebook post.
Now let’s get to the real good stuff: these group chat friends talk maaaad shit. Don’t we all though? I’m not giving this a 🚩.The group chat is a sacred space. (Until it gets subpoenaed.)
Friend: I’m now following Dawn Dorland’s kidney posts with creepy fascination.
Sonya: Oh, my god. Right? The whole thing — though I try to ignore it — persists in making me uncomfortable. … I just can’t help but think that she is feeding off the whole thing. … Of course, I feel evil saying this and can’t really talk with anyone about it.
Friend: I don’t know, a hashtag seems to me like a cry for attention.
Sonya: Right?? #domoreforeachother. Like, what am I supposed to do? DONATE MY ORGANS?
Lol, she has a point. 🚩 goes to Dawn for that hashtag.
Aside from general cattiness, there were a few particularly damning messages in there, like when one friend wrote:
The first draft of the story really was a takedown of Dawn, wasn’t it? But Sonya didn’t publish that draft. … She created a new, better story that used Dawn’s Facebook messages as initial inspiration, but that was about a lot of big things, instead of being about the small thing of taking down Dawn Dorland.
🚩🚩🚩
There is so much nuance surrounding race, art, and human nature in the original article that I couldn’t possibly sum up here. For instance, Sonya, an Asian-American woman, points out that her story is largely about the dynamic of the white donor trying to “save” the recipient, an Asian alcoholic—yet all discussion of her piece has centered around its similarities to Dawn, because Dawn has done so much to draw attention to it. (Dawn got hit with a defamation suit for the record, for contacting a ton of different people/entities associated with Sonya’s writing about her issues with the text. 🚩)
At the end of the day (and very, very long article) it’s an uncomfortably yet fascinating intimate look into two women who were on very different pages as to whether or not they were actually friends. The writer, Robert Kolker, did a perfect job in writing the piece in a way that naturally leads you to flip flop whose side you’re on. In the end, I’m on neither…but I can’t wait to see how their court case shakes out. 😈
from kidney sagas to egg sagas…
A followup from last edition: the FB group hunting Chicago’s egger got a mention during Weekend Update on SNL this weekend. Granted, the punchline was: “so good news, Chicago may finally be running out of bullets!” which is quite literally the laziest Chicago joke you could possibly write. Che redeemed himself with his next joke about Disney World’s new ride to celebrate its 50th anniversary:
mizzou football’s tactic to divert attention from a losing season:
Boston Dynamics robots will never not be terrifying, but I’ll sacrifice my comfort for the media coverage of my sweet sweet alma mater. The full video shows “Spot” break into a running man far more impressive than anything I could ever perform. In a collaboration with Marching Mizzou and Golden Girls, students and professors in the College of Engineering worked since June to program Spot to perform the choreographed routine. They’ve now made history as the *takes deep breath* first collegiate marching band to perform a halftime show with a four-legged agile robot. Talk about niche! 🖤🐯💛
you should be watching…
Squid Game is likely about to overtake Bridgerton as Netflix’s most-watched show in history, despite premiering just 3 weeks ago. It’s a phenomenal feat—it’s surprising to see a dark, dystopian thriller reach this level of mass-appeal and even more so when it’s a foreign language show with *gasp* subtitles.
In Squid Game, 456 people who desperately need money are hand picked to compete in a series of games for a chance to win a huge cash prize (around $28m). The games are based off childhood playground games, but with huge stakes—if you fail, you’re killed on the spot. It’s not all blood and gore; the show paints a very sad and humanistic portrait of people whose life decisions—or circumstances—left them in a position where they will put their life on the line for money.
Also……great memes!
good morning bitches hoping they don’t have to scroll through 12 memes about a show they haven’t watched yet:
rare moment of relating to Donald Trump:
Former Trump senior aide Stephanie Grisham’s memoir is out this week, detailing her handful of years working for Donald and Melania in the White House. These memoirs do nothing to excite me….however…..she included one tidbit that is so absurdly perfect:
“Mr. Trump’s handlers designated an unnamed White House official known as the “Music Man” to play him his favorite show tunes, including “Memory” from “Cats,” to pull him from the brink of rage.”
I like to think Trump favors CATS (2019) over the Broadway production.
SPEAKING OF WHICH:
Andrew Lloyd Webber (CATS composer, for the uncultured) recently did an interview with Variety, in which he offered this commentary on Tom Hooper’s famously terrible CATS (2019) movie:
ok, one more note on musical movie adaptations:
The trailer for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut, Tick Tick Boom dropped this week. For those unfamiliar with this musical (like me), Tick Tick Boom is the semi-autobiographical story of composer Jonathan Larson, who struggles for years to write the musical RENT. (Here’s a tragic fact for you: after spending almost a decade of his life writing and re-writing RENT, Jonathan Larson died the morning of its off-Broadway premiere.)
I love musicals, I love BTS stories, I love Andrew Garfield, but good morning bitches know how I feel about LMM, specifically his love for casting himself despite lackluster vocal chops. But don’t worry, I’ve already scoured IMDB and it appears that he is only a director and producer, and will not pop up with a bit part and solo, à la In The Heights.
we don’t have time for this week on twitter…
But that’s okay, cause you can just follow me there instead!
Until next time,
xo,
Lily
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