This article has uncovered in me a previously unknown moral failing: apparently I cannot forgive someone if I don’t like them. That’s on me! Team No One forever, because I just cannot get over how much I hate them both. They’re two people who have never heard of de-escalation, since there are so many points in the story where all of this could’ve been avoided if one of them was just honest.
Why did Dawn need to de-escalate this? To keep peace with a friend who thought so little of her she didn’t even share that she wrote a story “inspired” by Dawn’s donation? Dawn did nothing wrong. It’s just that people think she should have stopped simply to avoid “drama” when to her, it wasn’t drama but her words and her livelihood. Why is it on her to stop this?
I fully agree with what you wrote - whether likeable or not, Dawn was the one wronged here and I do not fault her for pursuing some outcomes for the bad behavior by Sonya. I don't personally have the energy for that kind of revenge, but maybe if I felt wronged enough I would - maybe there is some threshold after which you just can't turn away and let it go. Now I hope that Sonya (and her famous author friends) are feeling enough heat and discomfort to learn a lesson. My 6 year old probably has a better grasp of fairness and kindness than the people on that group chat...
You’ve finally converted me Ilana. I didn’t like Sonya, I liked Dawn, but I couldn’t see how Dawn was right and I was a reluctant Sonya supporter. But put all together like this and it’s hard to stand behind Sonyas argument anymore
Not many people would donate a kidney under any circumstances. You have to be a special kind of person to consider this. I don’t think recognition was the motivation but if she was looking for a little recognition afterwards from her “friend”, I think she is deserving. If Sonya ever needed any organ I doubt she would mock the donor for any reason , that’s if anyone wanted to give her anything.
I am a “so cringe” type of person. And I’ve been in several situations (not even all that long ago) where I’ve found out that “friends” were talking about me behind my back. It is very easy to:
A. Project your own beliefs onto someone else’s motives, claiming it can only be for this reason (aka white savior) because you can’t imagine another. My (pre-med) daughter wants to donate an organ. She wants to do this with no knowledge of who would receive it. (We talked her out of it for now, as she concentrates on applying for med school.) So, would she have white savior complex if the recipient is not white? Would she be accused of doing it for reasons other than her immensely kind heart?
B. Allow your feelings for a person to color your perception of their deeds. If it had been anyone else in that writer circle, they would have lauded this altruistic act. But because she is an “annoying” type of person, people found her PR to be embarrassing, therefore she was doing it for attention or validation. And to that, like Ilana alluded to, charities and donors don’t care. Just like a company donates “portions of proceeds” to a charity in order to promote or sell a product, even if Dawn did this for love or acceptance, the donor doesn’t care. The donor is living and was so thankful for a living donation that his wife did the same thing. It’s not a savior complex to want to do good and maybe have that good acknowledged by people you thought you were close to.
Here’s where I disagree. I don’t consider this “revenge”. I think Dawn truly sees this as “justice”. It’s just not right that Sonya did this. She has dug in because it’s the right thing to do. She is also protecting the right to her words. She isn’t wrong that if she just let this all go away, but wanted to publish her letter one day, there’s a chance she could get accused of plagiarizing Sonya. If she doesn’t fight it now, she loses any future rights to her own words and story.
This is not about 2 shitty people bickering about something stupid. This is about a person that people consistently find annoying who did what she thought was right (the donation, talking about it, suing, all of it) and and a mean girl who did something she knew was morally murky at best but initially prevailed because she’s more popular. Without Dawn’s commitment to protecting her own words, she never would have known that her “friends” were talking about her and that Sonya very much copied the letter and resisted changing the words for a long time. Sonya lost the right to tell this story, IMO, but Dawn lost much more. She will never fully trust a friendship again. She will always wonder if they are making fun of her behind her back. Humanity needs to stop victimizing the popular people and vilifying good people who might just be annoying.
I agree with you that it was more seeking justice than revenge. And I absolutely agree with this line "This is about a person that people consistently find annoying who did what she thought was right (the donation, talking about it, suing, all of it) and and a mean girl who did something she knew was morally murky at best but initially prevailed because she’s more popular." Sonya never thought she had the moral high ground. She just tried to justify her actions after the fact by making Dawn look insufferable because she didn't like the consequences.
I also think your situation with Noa was justice. You maybe wanted a little revenge, but ultimately you weren’t looking to make him suffer, you wanted him to make it right and to not be able to do this to other people who might not have the visibility, thus public pressure, you do. It’s what a lot of people are explaining about Britney, when someone says “who cares?” Her visibility sheds light on it for others who don’t have that kind of public pressure. Justice, not revenge. I think a lot of things are called revenge that are actually justice by people who want it to go away and thus put it in a negative connotation.
That is a good point about Dawn protecting her own ability to use her words later. I don't understand how anyone can defend Sonya using Dawn's words and getting away with it. She admitted that those are not her words, that she tried to change them and couldn't find a way - to me that is just a closed case. And yeah, if I were Dawn, I would forever have a hard time trusting anyone again.
I’m going to be fully honest, I only read what you wrote, never the nyt article. I don’t think I will read it either. Personally, I am team no one. It sounds like two icky people, making icky situations, ickier.
It’s awesome that Dawn donated her Kidney, it’s awesome she wanted to create a ripple effect, it’s sad she needed validation from her kind of friends, but that is life. We seek love and acceptance. It just is.
It’s icky that Sonya felt the need to ridicule someone, to create talks about her behind her back, and then to get more people to continue the spiral of meanness. Such is life as well. There are icky people all over. Dawn could of let it go as you said, but chose not to. Sonya could have at any point not wrote mean things about Dawn but chose not to. She could have owned up and apologized for plagiarism but chose not to. There is no side to take in my opinion. Just two icky situations where two people are being icky, and in the place that makes things sort of icky, the ickiest: the internet. At the end of the day for me this was just an entertaining gossip story. This is a Dawn and Sonya problem that didn’t need the internet but got the internet. Personally while this is a big problem (plagiarism) it’s a big problem to only Dawn and for me, it’s simply gossip to read during my coffee break. Albeit, entertaining, as the youths would say, asf. 🙃 I always enjoy your work Ilana because you are so thorough and try to do what is in my opinion, what journalists should do. Which is to show all of the facts and remain unbiased. ♥️♥️
I don’t think it’s 2 people being icky. Nothing in your words paints Dawn as being icky, aside from maybe saying Dawn could have let it go. There’s plenty of proof that Sonya is icky. But Dawn’s flaw of being considered annoying by “friends” is not icky, IMO. It would be interesting to see if you change mind, if you’re willing to read the article.
You’re probably right. I just understood from the article that Dawn and Sonya were not really friends, more acquaintances, who didn’t like each other. So I guess that’s where my icky for Dawn comes from, too. They don’t like each other but somehow continue a fake relationship.
Per the emails and such that Dawn would send Sonya about being on her group but not liking or commenting, I get an icky feeling. Maybe cringey is the better word to use for Dawn as everyone else is but it feels more icky for me. Even if she did it because she needed validation from a maybe friend, it makes me wonder if she had an ulterior motive, and even if her prodding led to her finding out about the mean messages it leaves me feeling something.
That doesn’t matter though. My opinion is not going to solve their problem.
Yes, I know you were talking about Ilana’s writing. That’s why I commented that I wondered if your viewpoint would change if you read the NYT article. In the article Dawn states she considered Sonya a friend, not just an acquaintance. She never said she didn’t like Sonya. She was hurt by Sonya’s actions because she was a friend, even if it was just professionally.
And like Ilana explained, Dawn was seeing the metrics of her FB page. She could see that Sonya was visiting and looking around regularly, but wasn’t engaging. Regardless of how abrupt it felt that she “confronted” Sonya about it, it turns out her instincts were dead on in that regard. Sonya was looking around and using what she saw to make fun of her and used her words to plagiarize a story. So, while I’m not saying your opinion is wrong, because it’s your own feelings, I just can’t see it as icky. At most, it was simply lacking in societal graces like the humble brag, which if you read the Twitter link in one of the other comments, is very much something Dawn wouldn’t have learned the finer points of growing up poor.
Again, you’re probably right. I only got what I read. I didn’t know that Dawn did consider Sonya a friend, I just assumed from what I read they weren’t very close. I was wrong.
I probably won’t read the article still, because as I said, it is a Dawn and Sonya problem. It is not up to me to play any sort of morality police role. There will be lawyers, judges, and such who will decide who wins in the courts regarding the plagiarism.
I will say, I grew up waaayyy below the poverty line, and I can assure you, my mom taught me plenty of things about manners, societal norms and such. Poorness does not equal no manners. Just as wealth does not equal manners. I also didn’t post this to get people on a bandwagon to consider Dawn icky. She could be the very kindest person in the world. As could Sonya. I do not know them, I only know what I read from this article, about their situation, and it leaves me feeling icky. What I know is a small percentage of what their life is, what the problem is, so I can not form a proper judgement on any of these women. I can say plagiarism is wrong, it’s a crime, and I hope justice is served.
As a backtrack, I don’t have a Twitter, and didn’t understand what you meant about the link, (My younger brother had to explain it to me when I asked. He also explained threads. 🙃) I did go through and read it, and I do see what you meant at the end about the humble brag. So I also now see what you meant by that, it was not regarding a lack of manners. I see that now. I do agree with the thread, all we have is our honor and our honesty and we do use that a lot. Even if it causes us to lose any sort of high ground with the wealthy.
Regardless, my feelings of icky are about the entire issue in the article, not about the women themselves. Another angle people could try to take is culturally. As a first Gen Mexican, who grew up in America, I can definitely notice how I am taking this differently than others. It’d be interesting to see what non-writers, and what people from all sorts of class ranks think.
I’m going to side with the mean girls on this one. I found Dawn to be “So Cringe” in this story. I’ve known women like her that crave validation and attention much like Christians that go to Africa to help the starving children just for the Facebook photos and notation on their LinkedIn profile. I’m all for feeding the hungry, but once you post online, you are only feeding your ego.
Now on to Larson, doesn’t life imitate art and vise versa? Dawn was worthy of her attention to write a story on, a story so captivating it was published. I believe Dawn to be jealous that a story based on her was published when nothing she did ever was. Aren’t we all mean girls in some form? Team Larson over here and no apologies about it.
Absolutely. I did not do a deep dive into all facts on this article. I’m basing my opinion simply on the NYT article alone. Most on the comment section here seem to be Team Dawn as a moral choice.
This is the article I needed to see to put an end to my mini obsession. You hit all the points I thought and more. Unless there is still untold transgressions by Dawn against Sonya I don’t see why Sonya would do this. And I agree a small FB group of who she considered close and interested is very different than going on and on about it in large format. Thank you for this examination of the whole thing. And yes it’s crazy that I’m obsessed as a non-writer 🤨
I forgot. Yes I think Dawn is way less cringey than how she was portrayed in the NYT article and she acknowledges not forming normal
attachments when young which means she may misread non-interest from Sonya because those relationship queues aren’t fully understood. She may actually have a disorder such is Borderline personality but she definitely has a past that would indicate ‘handle with care’ in this aspect and instead of understanding or acknowledging that Sonya uses her possible need for attention as a topic for gossip and other violations.
This is exactly my thought as well. From the beginning I really felt like everyone was concluding that the wrong art friend was the narcissist. I recognize so much of Dawns attention seeking behaviors in my own family members with BDP. In fact, as I’m not a writer, this is the aspect of the story that captured my attention the most…the behavioral psychology of it all.
Exactly, I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone but to me this is a story about someone who is neurodivergent getting picked on by someone who is neurotypical and judgemental about it. And this happened because they are trusting the other persons words not actions. I would guess Sonya had always been a little cool to Dawn but Dawn never saw it because Sonya was nice and polite out of societal courtesy. Hence why everyone says this is a one sided friendship.
The point you made that sums up the whole thing succinctly for me is that Dawn didn’t do anything to Sonya. Were Dawn’s actions cringey? Sure, but she never did anything to deliberately hurt Sonya. Whereas Sonya went so far as to lift her letter almost word for word from Facebook and named the character Dawn originally. And then, she denied it all. While she may not have considered Dawn a friend, it was clear by inviting her to a private Facebook group that Dawn considered her one, and she exploited that invitation and was deliberately mean and profited off of it! If she wasn’t interested in knowing more about Dawn’s kidney donation she could have easily declined the invitation to the Facebook group in the first place.
Thank you for writing about this! I admit I was originally team Sonja, but after realizing I completely misunderstood the initial email/Facebook group interaction, I'm fully on Team Dawn. The NYT article is VERY misleading, to the point that I wonder if the author was trying to make Dawn as unlikeable as possible. I even went back to read it again to confirm I didn't misread it the first time. Here is the appropriate paragraph:
"But just after the surgery, when she checked Facebook, Dorland noticed some people she’d invited into the group hadn’t seemed to react to any of her posts. On July 20, she wrote an email to one of them: a writer named Sonya Larson."
Reading this paragraph with no other outside information, I thought it was VERY weird for Dawn to email her friends in her Facebook group post asking if they had seen her post and why they hadn't commented. To me, this screamed "I'm only doing this for likes and validation." I therefore developed an unreasonable picture of Dawn, who I thought was only doing something for validation, got upset when people made fun of her for it, and tried to ruin someone else's career out of jealousy.
Not having ever run a Facebook group, I didn't know Dawn could see that Sonja was visiting her group regularly and was trying to figure out why she wasn't engaging. This completely changes the reason/meaning of the original email from Dawn. After learning this and reading your points, I went back and reread the article and I came away with a completely different view than when I read it originally.
It's clear to me now how much Sonja was gaslighting Dawn and that Sonja clearly used Dawn's letter as the basis for her story while claiming otherwise. Yikes.
Yes absolutely. I think the Times article was very misleading. I don't know if that was to drum up a more even controversy to get views or if he was bias by his own affiliations to the writers mentioned. Even when I rewrote the Times version of Dawn emailing Sonya about the lack of likes, it didn't sound nearly as bad as how Kolker put it. It was like he intentionally wanted her actions to sound off. There are a whole bunch of twitter threads coming out now from people who are actually going through the legal documents making the argument— what if Dawn wasn't crazy at all and reacted like a totally normal person who was treated so egregiously but people she thought were her friends? There is no defense of Sonya in my opinion.
Yes! I read the article, saw a few tweets from Celeste Ng and thought the whole story was a mess of Dawn's making. 🤦🏻♀️ It's a good reminder to always think critically and obtain information from a variety of sources.
I think there's an angle that could have been Team Sonya had she fessed up that the story was inspired by Dawn and never published the early version that lifted language verbatim. As it stands I'm reluctantly Team Dawn and while it's the 'unacceptable' answer I'm somewhat Team no one lol. There are no winners and I think they both behaved in strange ways which makes me thing no matter what is uncovered there are parts of the story we'll never fully know.
Loved your take! I’ve had a few conversations with friends this last week about the article, we’ve all landed (almost reluctantly) on team Dawn.
I also found this Twitter thread really interesting. Not a commentator I usually agree with, but I think that idea of class and the fact that Dawn pulled herself out of an impoverish background is an angle the New York Times missed.
That is a great thread! I love his point that Dawn's biggest offense was that she didn't understand the art of the humble brag, which is really only something people from more privileged backgrounds understand how to do or why it's even important.
Team Dawn. Either way you look at it, Journalism 101 is never plagiarize. Sonya barely changing Dawn's post goes against all journalist codes of conduct and ethics!
There's an interview with an altruistic kidney donor that provided some context for Dawn's behavior on Feminine Chaos. She also wanted strongly to donate right off the bat, and has to curb her instinct to proselytize her friends. Reminds me of the interviews with Shatner after his space flight: burbling, joyful, this close to incoherent. But humans that have their mind blown renew my faith in humanity!
This article has uncovered in me a previously unknown moral failing: apparently I cannot forgive someone if I don’t like them. That’s on me! Team No One forever, because I just cannot get over how much I hate them both. They’re two people who have never heard of de-escalation, since there are so many points in the story where all of this could’ve been avoided if one of them was just honest.
To this I say, when was Dawn not honest? If anything, her problem is that she is too honest!
Why did Dawn need to de-escalate this? To keep peace with a friend who thought so little of her she didn’t even share that she wrote a story “inspired” by Dawn’s donation? Dawn did nothing wrong. It’s just that people think she should have stopped simply to avoid “drama” when to her, it wasn’t drama but her words and her livelihood. Why is it on her to stop this?
I fully agree with what you wrote - whether likeable or not, Dawn was the one wronged here and I do not fault her for pursuing some outcomes for the bad behavior by Sonya. I don't personally have the energy for that kind of revenge, but maybe if I felt wronged enough I would - maybe there is some threshold after which you just can't turn away and let it go. Now I hope that Sonya (and her famous author friends) are feeling enough heat and discomfort to learn a lesson. My 6 year old probably has a better grasp of fairness and kindness than the people on that group chat...
You’ve finally converted me Ilana. I didn’t like Sonya, I liked Dawn, but I couldn’t see how Dawn was right and I was a reluctant Sonya supporter. But put all together like this and it’s hard to stand behind Sonyas argument anymore
Yes!!! You were the one who made me read the article originally! And you were who had in mind this entire time. I WIN!!!!!!
Lol and you were the one who’s brain I most wanted to pick on this one
Not many people would donate a kidney under any circumstances. You have to be a special kind of person to consider this. I don’t think recognition was the motivation but if she was looking for a little recognition afterwards from her “friend”, I think she is deserving. If Sonya ever needed any organ I doubt she would mock the donor for any reason , that’s if anyone wanted to give her anything.
I am a “so cringe” type of person. And I’ve been in several situations (not even all that long ago) where I’ve found out that “friends” were talking about me behind my back. It is very easy to:
A. Project your own beliefs onto someone else’s motives, claiming it can only be for this reason (aka white savior) because you can’t imagine another. My (pre-med) daughter wants to donate an organ. She wants to do this with no knowledge of who would receive it. (We talked her out of it for now, as she concentrates on applying for med school.) So, would she have white savior complex if the recipient is not white? Would she be accused of doing it for reasons other than her immensely kind heart?
B. Allow your feelings for a person to color your perception of their deeds. If it had been anyone else in that writer circle, they would have lauded this altruistic act. But because she is an “annoying” type of person, people found her PR to be embarrassing, therefore she was doing it for attention or validation. And to that, like Ilana alluded to, charities and donors don’t care. Just like a company donates “portions of proceeds” to a charity in order to promote or sell a product, even if Dawn did this for love or acceptance, the donor doesn’t care. The donor is living and was so thankful for a living donation that his wife did the same thing. It’s not a savior complex to want to do good and maybe have that good acknowledged by people you thought you were close to.
Here’s where I disagree. I don’t consider this “revenge”. I think Dawn truly sees this as “justice”. It’s just not right that Sonya did this. She has dug in because it’s the right thing to do. She is also protecting the right to her words. She isn’t wrong that if she just let this all go away, but wanted to publish her letter one day, there’s a chance she could get accused of plagiarizing Sonya. If she doesn’t fight it now, she loses any future rights to her own words and story.
This is not about 2 shitty people bickering about something stupid. This is about a person that people consistently find annoying who did what she thought was right (the donation, talking about it, suing, all of it) and and a mean girl who did something she knew was morally murky at best but initially prevailed because she’s more popular. Without Dawn’s commitment to protecting her own words, she never would have known that her “friends” were talking about her and that Sonya very much copied the letter and resisted changing the words for a long time. Sonya lost the right to tell this story, IMO, but Dawn lost much more. She will never fully trust a friendship again. She will always wonder if they are making fun of her behind her back. Humanity needs to stop victimizing the popular people and vilifying good people who might just be annoying.
I agree with you that it was more seeking justice than revenge. And I absolutely agree with this line "This is about a person that people consistently find annoying who did what she thought was right (the donation, talking about it, suing, all of it) and and a mean girl who did something she knew was morally murky at best but initially prevailed because she’s more popular." Sonya never thought she had the moral high ground. She just tried to justify her actions after the fact by making Dawn look insufferable because she didn't like the consequences.
I also think your situation with Noa was justice. You maybe wanted a little revenge, but ultimately you weren’t looking to make him suffer, you wanted him to make it right and to not be able to do this to other people who might not have the visibility, thus public pressure, you do. It’s what a lot of people are explaining about Britney, when someone says “who cares?” Her visibility sheds light on it for others who don’t have that kind of public pressure. Justice, not revenge. I think a lot of things are called revenge that are actually justice by people who want it to go away and thus put it in a negative connotation.
That is a good point about Dawn protecting her own ability to use her words later. I don't understand how anyone can defend Sonya using Dawn's words and getting away with it. She admitted that those are not her words, that she tried to change them and couldn't find a way - to me that is just a closed case. And yeah, if I were Dawn, I would forever have a hard time trusting anyone again.
I’m going to be fully honest, I only read what you wrote, never the nyt article. I don’t think I will read it either. Personally, I am team no one. It sounds like two icky people, making icky situations, ickier.
It’s awesome that Dawn donated her Kidney, it’s awesome she wanted to create a ripple effect, it’s sad she needed validation from her kind of friends, but that is life. We seek love and acceptance. It just is.
It’s icky that Sonya felt the need to ridicule someone, to create talks about her behind her back, and then to get more people to continue the spiral of meanness. Such is life as well. There are icky people all over. Dawn could of let it go as you said, but chose not to. Sonya could have at any point not wrote mean things about Dawn but chose not to. She could have owned up and apologized for plagiarism but chose not to. There is no side to take in my opinion. Just two icky situations where two people are being icky, and in the place that makes things sort of icky, the ickiest: the internet. At the end of the day for me this was just an entertaining gossip story. This is a Dawn and Sonya problem that didn’t need the internet but got the internet. Personally while this is a big problem (plagiarism) it’s a big problem to only Dawn and for me, it’s simply gossip to read during my coffee break. Albeit, entertaining, as the youths would say, asf. 🙃 I always enjoy your work Ilana because you are so thorough and try to do what is in my opinion, what journalists should do. Which is to show all of the facts and remain unbiased. ♥️♥️
I don’t think it’s 2 people being icky. Nothing in your words paints Dawn as being icky, aside from maybe saying Dawn could have let it go. There’s plenty of proof that Sonya is icky. But Dawn’s flaw of being considered annoying by “friends” is not icky, IMO. It would be interesting to see if you change mind, if you’re willing to read the article.
The article I am referring to is Ilana’s btw not the NYT’s one.
You’re probably right. I just understood from the article that Dawn and Sonya were not really friends, more acquaintances, who didn’t like each other. So I guess that’s where my icky for Dawn comes from, too. They don’t like each other but somehow continue a fake relationship.
Per the emails and such that Dawn would send Sonya about being on her group but not liking or commenting, I get an icky feeling. Maybe cringey is the better word to use for Dawn as everyone else is but it feels more icky for me. Even if she did it because she needed validation from a maybe friend, it makes me wonder if she had an ulterior motive, and even if her prodding led to her finding out about the mean messages it leaves me feeling something.
That doesn’t matter though. My opinion is not going to solve their problem.
Yes, I know you were talking about Ilana’s writing. That’s why I commented that I wondered if your viewpoint would change if you read the NYT article. In the article Dawn states she considered Sonya a friend, not just an acquaintance. She never said she didn’t like Sonya. She was hurt by Sonya’s actions because she was a friend, even if it was just professionally.
And like Ilana explained, Dawn was seeing the metrics of her FB page. She could see that Sonya was visiting and looking around regularly, but wasn’t engaging. Regardless of how abrupt it felt that she “confronted” Sonya about it, it turns out her instincts were dead on in that regard. Sonya was looking around and using what she saw to make fun of her and used her words to plagiarize a story. So, while I’m not saying your opinion is wrong, because it’s your own feelings, I just can’t see it as icky. At most, it was simply lacking in societal graces like the humble brag, which if you read the Twitter link in one of the other comments, is very much something Dawn wouldn’t have learned the finer points of growing up poor.
Again, you’re probably right. I only got what I read. I didn’t know that Dawn did consider Sonya a friend, I just assumed from what I read they weren’t very close. I was wrong.
I probably won’t read the article still, because as I said, it is a Dawn and Sonya problem. It is not up to me to play any sort of morality police role. There will be lawyers, judges, and such who will decide who wins in the courts regarding the plagiarism.
I will say, I grew up waaayyy below the poverty line, and I can assure you, my mom taught me plenty of things about manners, societal norms and such. Poorness does not equal no manners. Just as wealth does not equal manners. I also didn’t post this to get people on a bandwagon to consider Dawn icky. She could be the very kindest person in the world. As could Sonya. I do not know them, I only know what I read from this article, about their situation, and it leaves me feeling icky. What I know is a small percentage of what their life is, what the problem is, so I can not form a proper judgement on any of these women. I can say plagiarism is wrong, it’s a crime, and I hope justice is served.
As a backtrack, I don’t have a Twitter, and didn’t understand what you meant about the link, (My younger brother had to explain it to me when I asked. He also explained threads. 🙃) I did go through and read it, and I do see what you meant at the end about the humble brag. So I also now see what you meant by that, it was not regarding a lack of manners. I see that now. I do agree with the thread, all we have is our honor and our honesty and we do use that a lot. Even if it causes us to lose any sort of high ground with the wealthy.
Regardless, my feelings of icky are about the entire issue in the article, not about the women themselves. Another angle people could try to take is culturally. As a first Gen Mexican, who grew up in America, I can definitely notice how I am taking this differently than others. It’d be interesting to see what non-writers, and what people from all sorts of class ranks think.
I’m going to side with the mean girls on this one. I found Dawn to be “So Cringe” in this story. I’ve known women like her that crave validation and attention much like Christians that go to Africa to help the starving children just for the Facebook photos and notation on their LinkedIn profile. I’m all for feeding the hungry, but once you post online, you are only feeding your ego.
Now on to Larson, doesn’t life imitate art and vise versa? Dawn was worthy of her attention to write a story on, a story so captivating it was published. I believe Dawn to be jealous that a story based on her was published when nothing she did ever was. Aren’t we all mean girls in some form? Team Larson over here and no apologies about it.
I just ask you to consider that Dawn sounded "So Cringe" based on how the story was editorialized by the NY Times and not based on the actual facts.
Absolutely. I did not do a deep dive into all facts on this article. I’m basing my opinion simply on the NYT article alone. Most on the comment section here seem to be Team Dawn as a moral choice.
You totally nailed it Ilana. And as a side note, ‘eff’ Noa Santos forever.
This is the article I needed to see to put an end to my mini obsession. You hit all the points I thought and more. Unless there is still untold transgressions by Dawn against Sonya I don’t see why Sonya would do this. And I agree a small FB group of who she considered close and interested is very different than going on and on about it in large format. Thank you for this examination of the whole thing. And yes it’s crazy that I’m obsessed as a non-writer 🤨
I forgot. Yes I think Dawn is way less cringey than how she was portrayed in the NYT article and she acknowledges not forming normal
attachments when young which means she may misread non-interest from Sonya because those relationship queues aren’t fully understood. She may actually have a disorder such is Borderline personality but she definitely has a past that would indicate ‘handle with care’ in this aspect and instead of understanding or acknowledging that Sonya uses her possible need for attention as a topic for gossip and other violations.
This is exactly my thought as well. From the beginning I really felt like everyone was concluding that the wrong art friend was the narcissist. I recognize so much of Dawns attention seeking behaviors in my own family members with BDP. In fact, as I’m not a writer, this is the aspect of the story that captured my attention the most…the behavioral psychology of it all.
*BPD
Exactly, I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone but to me this is a story about someone who is neurodivergent getting picked on by someone who is neurotypical and judgemental about it. And this happened because they are trusting the other persons words not actions. I would guess Sonya had always been a little cool to Dawn but Dawn never saw it because Sonya was nice and polite out of societal courtesy. Hence why everyone says this is a one sided friendship.
The point you made that sums up the whole thing succinctly for me is that Dawn didn’t do anything to Sonya. Were Dawn’s actions cringey? Sure, but she never did anything to deliberately hurt Sonya. Whereas Sonya went so far as to lift her letter almost word for word from Facebook and named the character Dawn originally. And then, she denied it all. While she may not have considered Dawn a friend, it was clear by inviting her to a private Facebook group that Dawn considered her one, and she exploited that invitation and was deliberately mean and profited off of it! If she wasn’t interested in knowing more about Dawn’s kidney donation she could have easily declined the invitation to the Facebook group in the first place.
Thank you for writing about this! I admit I was originally team Sonja, but after realizing I completely misunderstood the initial email/Facebook group interaction, I'm fully on Team Dawn. The NYT article is VERY misleading, to the point that I wonder if the author was trying to make Dawn as unlikeable as possible. I even went back to read it again to confirm I didn't misread it the first time. Here is the appropriate paragraph:
"But just after the surgery, when she checked Facebook, Dorland noticed some people she’d invited into the group hadn’t seemed to react to any of her posts. On July 20, she wrote an email to one of them: a writer named Sonya Larson."
Reading this paragraph with no other outside information, I thought it was VERY weird for Dawn to email her friends in her Facebook group post asking if they had seen her post and why they hadn't commented. To me, this screamed "I'm only doing this for likes and validation." I therefore developed an unreasonable picture of Dawn, who I thought was only doing something for validation, got upset when people made fun of her for it, and tried to ruin someone else's career out of jealousy.
Not having ever run a Facebook group, I didn't know Dawn could see that Sonja was visiting her group regularly and was trying to figure out why she wasn't engaging. This completely changes the reason/meaning of the original email from Dawn. After learning this and reading your points, I went back and reread the article and I came away with a completely different view than when I read it originally.
It's clear to me now how much Sonja was gaslighting Dawn and that Sonja clearly used Dawn's letter as the basis for her story while claiming otherwise. Yikes.
Yes absolutely. I think the Times article was very misleading. I don't know if that was to drum up a more even controversy to get views or if he was bias by his own affiliations to the writers mentioned. Even when I rewrote the Times version of Dawn emailing Sonya about the lack of likes, it didn't sound nearly as bad as how Kolker put it. It was like he intentionally wanted her actions to sound off. There are a whole bunch of twitter threads coming out now from people who are actually going through the legal documents making the argument— what if Dawn wasn't crazy at all and reacted like a totally normal person who was treated so egregiously but people she thought were her friends? There is no defense of Sonya in my opinion.
Yes! I read the article, saw a few tweets from Celeste Ng and thought the whole story was a mess of Dawn's making. 🤦🏻♀️ It's a good reminder to always think critically and obtain information from a variety of sources.
I think there's an angle that could have been Team Sonya had she fessed up that the story was inspired by Dawn and never published the early version that lifted language verbatim. As it stands I'm reluctantly Team Dawn and while it's the 'unacceptable' answer I'm somewhat Team no one lol. There are no winners and I think they both behaved in strange ways which makes me thing no matter what is uncovered there are parts of the story we'll never fully know.
Loved your take! I’ve had a few conversations with friends this last week about the article, we’ve all landed (almost reluctantly) on team Dawn.
I also found this Twitter thread really interesting. Not a commentator I usually agree with, but I think that idea of class and the fact that Dawn pulled herself out of an impoverish background is an angle the New York Times missed.
https://twitter.com/pmatzko/status/1448075901028143110?s=21
That is a great thread! I love his point that Dawn's biggest offense was that she didn't understand the art of the humble brag, which is really only something people from more privileged backgrounds understand how to do or why it's even important.
Team Dawn. Either way you look at it, Journalism 101 is never plagiarize. Sonya barely changing Dawn's post goes against all journalist codes of conduct and ethics!
They both suck, and plagiarism is incredibly wrong. However, as a POC, I am deeply uncomfortable with how Dawn keeps going after Sonya. I also find it interesting that the racial element has not been discussed too much. I think this piece explains it better than I could - https://medium.com/@isabelwho/dear-white-people-reading-who-is-the-bad-art-friend-2d047dffbf58
There's an interview with an altruistic kidney donor that provided some context for Dawn's behavior on Feminine Chaos. She also wanted strongly to donate right off the bat, and has to curb her instinct to proselytize her friends. Reminds me of the interviews with Shatner after his space flight: burbling, joyful, this close to incoherent. But humans that have their mind blown renew my faith in humanity!
Thanks for the writer's take, Ilana!