A rant about hypocrisy

I blogged about this once before on another blog but today I am once again struck by how social media seems to make some people immune from the "filter" we use when we speak to people face to face. Or maybe some of the people I see on Twitter don't have that filter even face to face. There's no way of knowing with people I've neve rmet in person.

Today a prominent review blog reviewed an independently-published book and gave it a fairly scathing review. There were a lot of details about the story included in the review. I will admit this would not be the type of book I would read. Apparently it was never touted to be a "romance" but rather historical fiction and apparently included some scenes of rape including repeated rape of a child that would definitely turn some readers off, me included.

But the Twitter chatter immediately began vilifying the author for writing this stuff. There were comments about not just hating the book but hating the author. And yet some of these same people have also commented that they are not the books they write. Authors of erotic romance have often had to deal with perceptions and assumptions about who they are because of what they write, and have often spoken out about this in social media. But yet they do the same thing to someone else because of something that person has written.

If someone chooses to write about subjects many people find abhorrent, does that mean he or she is a bad person?  There are very likely are people offended by what I've written. And they may have made assumptions about me because of that. I don't have to read about things I find abhorrent. But should I tell people they can't write those things? Should I make assumptions about who that person is because of what they've written? I don't want people doing that to me...