note: this is a bonus post, made to be timely news. hit previous to see a bird post.

I’ve written before about how NaNoWriMo – the org behind the event of National Novel Writing Month – burned itself to bitter ashes.  Wait, no, I thought I had.  I had meant to, but didn’t end up happening.  Anyway, the ashes have been stirring in the wind for a minute, but are finally set to blow away once and for all.  The org is breaking up, their ownership of the url nanowrimo dot org expires right around November 2025.

You may not have noticed this about me but I have a bit of an outsider position everywhere I go, am not much of a joiner for online communities, and so I only dipped my toe in the formerly vast sea that was.  NaNoWriMo had a big forum.  It had very petty moderators.  I barely interacted with it while it was successful, barely tracked the ins and outs of the trash fire, and so I may be getting some details wrong.  Nonetheless, rough timeline of events:

Genial bay area techbro Chris Baty came up with the idea of holding an event where people try to write an entire novel in one month.  I think the idea came from the way there are so many wanna-be novelists that could never seem to get past the first page, never break out of self-editing as they go, doubt unto paralysis.  What if they had no choice but to just go, go, go to get it done?  He published the book No Plot, No Problem to introduce this scheme.  I don’t recall if that book introduced the word NaNoWriMo, to describe “National Novel Writing Month,” or if that came when…

NaNoWriMo became a non-profit org, running a website with tools to track word count, forums, and funtacular culture of whimsy and goodtimin’.  In parallel they got a yewchoob channel and other social media presences to raise funds and to evangelize the movement.  You too can be a writer; dare to dream.  This was a brand similar to the gentler end of turn-of-the-millennium nerd culture: lolrandom squirrel ninja pirate monkey something something.  If u can has cheezburger, u can write novel.

You lost that lovin’ feelin’, owo that lovin’ feelin’…  The org was poorly organized, spending most of its resources on salaries for upper class business majors that did fuck-all, relying way too much on volunteers to actually run the show.  They also spent resources on a “young writers program” to the exclusion of the event that originally brought the people in, I think as a gambit to score themselves “education loot” that doesn’t actually exist.

The participants were problematic.  In the bitter parting shot from the org’s Nero, the acrimony of the participants was blamed for the downfall.  No, I’m thinking of one specific faction.  Christian youths are not allowed to engage in the same culture as the people around them.  No Power Rangers, no Pokeymans.  So they find places to be, and a rather large group found they could socialize on NaNoWriMo’s forums.  They got their own special place to be on the forum and were insular, mostly talking among themselves.

However, being from ameriKKKa’s fascist version of xtianity, they spent some amount of time being offensive to liberal and progressive people in other areas of the site.  And since they got their parents to donate to the org, the moderators turned a blind eye to their shit.  Mods were applying double standards which only became more hypocritical as time went on.

The mods were problematic.  One was a prolific and relentless micromanager who rudely hectored everyone on where and how they were meant to post.  She punished innocent people for dust-ups started by creeps, which resulted in good people leaving the site while creeps stuck around for years.  She helped create a culture of uptight and bitter commenters.

A more problematic mod, RiP, was a disabled trans woman from the rural south, who was part of that culture of hypocrisy and pettiness, but also kind of pervy creep?  She had a parallel presence on a diaper play website and sent some of those xtian youths thattaway when they were still minors.  She was also squirrely as an old growth tree, prolific sock puppeteer, compulsive liar, and just an epic trash fire wherever she went.  She had a history of doing things like taking over a fandom forum and then hijacking and ruining it for most of the participants.  Even the diaper people were not loving her.

That lady’s last communication to the public was about how she was going to release an exposé on all the misdeeds of the org, as it was throwing totally innocent her under the bus.  She shortly died of unspecified chronic illness, after years of crying wolf about how she was going to die at any moment.  A force of nature to the end.

The business people were ragingly incompetent.  They had a functional website that was frequented by tens of thousands of people who could be milked for donations…  but it was a lil’ web 2.0, wasn’t it?  It needed an update, so they spent way too much money on a site redesign and committed to it entirely, even tho it broke most of the basic functionality people had come to rely on, and did everything worse.  In parallel to that they nuked the old forums and rebuilt them anew on a third party platform that had issues of its own, and they ran that as badly as ever – if not worse.

The SJWs were incompetent.  They took a look around and saw not enough diversity, and thought lo, let’s try to make everybody feel welcome by coming up with a thousand rooms for every type of oppressed demographic under the sun.  You know, lock ’em up in little boxes where nobody has to look at them, and in the meantime, forget to actually make forums areas for people to discuss writing?  All the while, maintain the acrimonious mod culture that makes sure nobody feels welcome regardless of where they land.  And never ban those xtian transphobes.  They got money, y’know.

Acrimonious mod number one got outed for making a racist comment in private and the org felt the need to address that with some big public statement.  This was more incompetence from their PR department.  You quietly disappear the racist and say as little as possible, right?  By making a public show of it, they accidentally invited everybody and their mom to come complain about other issues they had not addressed.

This is when perv mod’s crimes came to more direct light resulting in her wacky exposé gambit.  It’s a shame she was lying about that, or just died before she could make it happen.  The one thing of value the org ultimately produced was juicy shadenfreude.

Overpaid business major saw the unfolding rebellion and descended from his dais to reassure the masses the org was hearing them and would do things to resolve all their concerns, which worked for two minutes.  But when it looked like doing the things people asked for would actually take work, and he dragged his feet for a few weeks, some people suggested he might be incompetent on social media.  He famously said of this in a full length article off site, “I experienced cruelty today,” which is, again, the juiciest of shadenfreude.

With mod after mod getting fired from their unpaid jobs, the forums were partially shuttered, and eventually shut down I think?  Meanwhile, the org got a new mouthpiece – a writer of trashy romances known by a pen name and using an AI-generated avatar.  She was rude and belligerent, causing more acrimony and desertion.

The corporate donors were problematic.  One of them was literally a known scam to exploit aspiring authors and they refused to stop taking that money.  One of them was called out for using AI editing tools in their software package.  Again, the org had an opportunity to just not say anything, but the weird new boss came on to defend the use of AI and call its detractors ableist.

Now I’m not in charge of a non-profit org that demographically skews liberal, but if I was, you can bet I never would have published my personal opinions on AI.  If you are on any left or liberal leaning social space on the web for the last few years, you have been exposed to 24-7 hate for AI and nothing positive about it.  It’s a toxic hot potato that no PR person in their right mind would ever say thing one about.  Keep this sponsor despite the callout and just be quiet about it.  No comment.  But what did they do?  Chose to defend AI.

They were basically taking the remaining 8% or so of the donation money they used to have and throwing it into flaming dumpsters at this point.  The only thing they could do to make a tiny bit of dosh was sell t-shirts and they broke their t-shirt shop.  You can’t make this shit up.

So here at the end of the road, announcing they are sunsetting the organization, acrimonious trashy romance weirdo uses the email subscription to tell everybody, “This is really your fault, you know.”  And maybe it is, in a way, but it’s kind of a shame that something born in an innocent time of squirrels and ninjas was reduced to such ignominy and bad blood.

Goodbye whimsy.  Goodbye viking hats.  Goodbye Chris Baty.  I imagine you’ve gone into witness protection by now.  Have a wonderful life, everybody who lived through this.  And enjoy Novel Writing Month (freeware version) for as long as you may please.  I know I do.

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