The New Statesman has an article about the cesspool that is GoodReads. Listen, I used to sign up for every new service that came along, mostly to make sure I got the tag “Bookninja” before some copycat the dark web got it, but I was side-eying GoodReads from the beginning. Frankly, I called this one back in the day and now log in about once a year to make sure the account doesn’t get cancelled. Why, I don’t know. If you’re an author, one of the worst things you can do to the quality of your day is to onan-search yourself on that site. The apathy is worse than the vitriol and the level of discourse is at about the level of a White House press briefing. Don’t do it.
There should be nothing in the world more benign than Goodreads, a website and app that 90 million people around the world use to find new books, track their reading, and attempt to meet people with similar tastes. For almost 15 years, it has been the dominant platform for readers to rate books and find recommendations. But many of the internet’s most dedicated readers now wish they could share their enthusiasm for books elsewhere. What should be a cosy, pleasant corner of the internet has become a monster.
Bookninja 