So, a trusted industry expert turned out to not be the person they presented themselves to be. What now?
You might know what your first reaction will be upon learning this, since none of us make it into adulthood without experiencing this sort of disappointment in an authority figure. Maybe, upon learning the truth about the trusted expert, you roll your eyes and say, ever so cynically, “Oh wow, what a shocker.” Maybe you feel deeply betrayed and turn from their biggest supporter to their worst nightmare. Maybe you feel genuinely lost and unmoored, wondering what to do now that the person you looked to has been unmasked as a fallible, if not intentionally duplicitous, person. Maybe you simply refuse to believe it. Maybe you delight in watching the downfall.
Whatever your reaction, consider this your moment between the stimulus and the response to pause, take a beat with yourself to ask why this is your pattern, and decide if your usual response is the one you’d like to proceed with.
Disappointment of this variety is all too familiar to those of us who’ve been in this industry for a long time, and I admit that my default response over the years has turned from disappointment and betrayal to instant cynicism, even though I know that cynicism is not noble or cool and is, in fact, an expression of anxiety and yet one more failed attempt by my psyche to protect me from pain.
So really, I invite you to pause along with me while we take a deeper look into our menu of thinking, feeling, and behaving for when someone we looked up to in our professional lives is revealed to be someone different from who we thought they were.
The reason I’m addressing this issue today is that we will be seeing this process happen more and more as the industry conditions change and the façades of success people have maintained for so long come crumbling down due to a lack of finances to keep them going or even the ultimate expression of the person’s ego that got them into that situation in the first place.
Under the pressure cooker of the tightening industry conditions, the truth will out. Stress accentuates the ego, and if we haven’t laid the groundwork of self-awareness to keep ours in check, we, too, will inevitably “show our asses,” as it were.
This is obviously something I’ve thought about myself over the last couple of years, as I joined the Sell More Books Show, started consulting and speaking, and generally made myself more visible. I know that when you’re in any visible position, there will be people who take a dislike to you, and those people can sometimes confuse their envy or simple difference of opinion with the notion that you have a character defect that deserves to be publicly punished.
I’ve seen this happen to people I’m close to and have experienced it myself to some extent, and that has certainly made me more sensitive to any accusations about people’s character without substantiating evidence.
It might be wise to preface this touchy discussion with a few reminders from our higher selves:
Just because someone does something we think is unethical does not mean that they are an unethical person. We don’t need to throw the whole person out because we don’t like something they did. You and I would hope for better treatment, and so we must give it.
We are free to not work with anyone in this industry we don’t trust for any reason.
We can stop following someone’s work without posting about it on the internet.
Just because we don’t like or trust someone doesn’t mean that their information isn’t helpful to someone else.
If you don’t agree with these statements, then your higher self might not be in the active stance it needs to be for the rest of this discussion, and you might want to come back to this later to avoid further irritation now.
Okay, now I want to talk about some of the usual reactions we have when industry experts aren’t who we thought they were and what might really be going on behind these reactions. This can help us more effectively and honestly handle our emotions and take actions we’ll be proud of for years to come.
The four reactions we’re going to inspect are shame, betrayal, cynicism, and schadenfreude. We may feel a little bit of each or switch quickly from one to another, so I recommend reading through all of them to not only make sense of your own reaction, but to better understand and gain sympathy for the reactions others around you might be experiencing.
Shame
It is very rare that anyone talks about the shame felt among the author community when this happens. Since shame is a contagious emotion—we feel it and our impulse is usually to pass it onto someone else as soon as humanly possible—it’s crucial that we talk about it.
There’s the shame that the person who’s been “found out” feels, certainly. And we might hope that the shame turns into some sort of guilt and remorse, as that might lead to a change of behavior in the future.
But there’s also the shame felt by the supporters of what I’ll call “the fallen hero.”
It is understandably embarrassing to feel like you’ve been conned. Perhaps it was not only that you were conned, but that you brought others into the fold as well by recommending the fallen hero’s podcast or books or courses, and so you feel a sense of shame for being complicit in the con. I should’ve known better. I should’ve seen through it. How did I fall for this sort of thing again?
Shame can isolate us and steal from us things we care about. If you feel ashamed of who you trusted for advice in your writing, that shame may become so associated with writing that you find yourself struggling to put words on the page. Shame is poisonous like that.
If you’re one of the people who feels shame in these situations, I won’t simply tell you to stop feeling it. I know it’s not that easy. But it’s important to remember that feeling shame for having been convincingly misled is, quite frankly, victim blaming.
Also: Shame thrives when you keep it a secret. By sharing with a close friend that you feel ashamed about falling for something, you’ve taken the first step toward letting that shame dissipate in the light and open air. Shame tells us we’re the only one who feels this way and that we should choke it down, but that’s just shame trying to keep itself alive.
Fallen heroes can be divided up crudely into two kinds: those who knew they were full of shit but didn’t care and those who were buying their own bullshit. When dealing with a fallen hero, it can be helpful to try to sort out which type you’re dealing with.
People who buy their own bullshit (self-deception plays an important role in ego protection, so this is quite common) are so convincing in their portrayal of success and expert knowledge that even if they didn’t believe it at first, they’ve begun to buy in. This is a common side-effect of the “fake it till you make it” mentality. Do they ever make it? Maybe, maybe not, but they certainly faked it enough to convince themselves on some level. Why, then, should you have known any better? The person closest to the song and dance was even fooled!
The variety of fallen hero who know they’re full of shit and simply don’t care so long as they get your money… well, that’s a particular type of psychology that lacks basic empathy and tends to fill the attentional space that empathy might’ve occupied with extensive plans for deception. While you were busy caring about the people in your life, this person was spending that mental energy concocting ways to steal your time, money, and attention. Therefore, the reason you were at a disadvantage was because you have a crucial piece of being human that they are missing. I don’t believe that’s something to feel shame over.
Usually, a fallen hero will be a mix of these two extremes. They may start out believing that they are doing it to help the community (usually buying their own bullshit to maintain their positive self-image), but then they begin to care less and less about that impact once the money flows in. They shift their attention to the real game at hand: seeing how much money they can rack up. So long as one of their contemporaries is making more, they’ll keep trying to find ways to up the cash flow.
Although, usually the amount they claim to be pulling in is exaggerated to create clout, and if that isn’t happening, the amount of profit they claim to be making is most definitely exaggerated if they even mention it. (An industry expert who talks more about revenue than profit is a big red flag.)
Regardless of where they fall on this sliding scale, you can see that, logically, there isn’t a strong case for you to feel ashamed of not having seen through the façade earlier.
Of course, knowing something logically and feeling it in your heart and body are different experiences. So if you still feel shame when you think about it, just keep walking yourself through the logic of it. This is a golden opportunity to practice compassion with yourself.
I’ll leave you with this, too: I don’t know of a single person who has been in this industry longer than a few years who has not followed an industry expert who was eventually revealed to be a fraudster or simply not a particularly ethically minded person. Not one. It’s practically a rite of passage.
Betrayal
I hesitate to even broach this emotion because is it so goddamn triggering for people. Betrayal is used to justify so much behavior that we would otherwise collectively classify as unacceptable or even horrifying.
But when someone you looked up to for guidance, support, and a path forward turns out to be much different than you imagined, betrayal is a common emotion that follows. And after all, why wouldn’t it be? “I listened to you every week believing you were [X], only to find out you’re really [Y]!” or “I paid you out of my retirement fund because because you claimed you knew what you were talking about, and now I find out you were bullshitting it all!”
I won’t argue that those things do fit the definition of betrayal. I would likely agree that you’ve been betrayed by that person. So maybe the reaction of betrayal is simple, and you’re entitled to feel that way for as long as you want.
But also.
*Closes eyes, takes a deep breath before walking straight into a shitstorm*
It’s possible that not all of the betrayal you’re feeling can be credited directly to the person you believe has betrayed you. There are patterns that each of us can fall into that put us in positions where our perception of betrayal is heightened, sometimes to the point of it becoming inevitable if given enough time.
Looking at our portion of responsibility does not need to lead to shame, but it is often the best way to lessen the intensity of our feelings of betrayal if those are interfering with the functioning of our everyday lives. I’m not telling you that your cheating ex-spouse betrayed you because you weren’t a good enough spouse to them, so please don’t cut me next time you see me at an event.
We are diving into nuance now. Hear me out.
There are a few patterns that lead us to trust people who are likely to later burn us, and if we tend toward those patterns throughout our lives and therefore find ourselves feeling betrayed by people frequently, the best thing we can do for ourselves moving forward is to look at these patterns closely and resolve them.
I am in no way saying that someone has not broken your trust by pointing out where your patterns might’ve contributed to the sense of betrayal you’re feeling. The reason I point these patterns out to you is so you can sort through what is betrayal on the part of the other person and how you could avoid feeling so monumentally betrayed in a situation.
Pointing out these patterns is not intended to shame you for having them. It’s to allow you to reevaluate some patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that you might’ve picked up early in life that are no longer of use and are, in fact, contributing to your suffering in situations like these.
Here are the main patterns we might fall into that heighten our negative feelings in a betrayal:
Pattern 1: Creating fantasized or romanticized versions of others
Enneagram 4s are the most prone to this pattern, and it looks like building an idealized fantasy version of someone to amplify whatever feeling you’re seeking from the relationship.
If you’re craving a soulmate, for example, you might find someone who ticks a few boxes and then fill in any gaps with the right imaginings to create a picture in your mind of the perfect partner. If you’re craving an industry expert to show you how to make seven figures a year from your books, you may find someone who seems smart enough and is A-OK accepting the fantasy they’ve created about themselves and their success.
I’ve seen people build layers and layers of fantasy on people this way. I’ve been subject to the layers and layers of fantasy myself from a past partner with this tendency, and it’s a strange and dehumanizing experience, frankly.
The reaction to this fantasy version having an undeniable hole poked in it (as is the case when your hero falls) is that the betrayal feels MAJOR. Even though you were responsible for projecting qualities onto them to complete the romanticized picture in your mind, you may still be holding them accountable for adhering to those standards that they never claimed to meet (or even knew about).
If you’re an Enneagram 4 or have a close connection to the patterns of the Four through a wing or stress or growth lines, it’s important to take a step back in fallen-hero situations and look at where the person truly misled and betrayed your trust and where you might’ve unintentionally made the betrayal more painful through the strokes of fantasy you added to your picture of them. Not only will doing that work likely help you feel less betrayed (which is the point of the exercise, because walking around feeling betrayed is not fun), but it will also help you recognize how this pattern develops in you so that you’re much less likely to repeat it in the future.
Pattern 2: Hope of being rescued
Any day now, some unbelievably wealthy person will show up at my door and tell me they love my satire novels so much that they’d like to provide me room and board in their vacation estate in the countryside, take care of all my expenses, and pay me a hefty stipend to keep writing my books. And, of course, I get to write whatever I want and they won’t interfere or ever ask for anything in return except for my unadulterated wit. Any day now.
Deep down inside, I think most people hold this secret hope. It’s the desire to be able to create freely without all the other responsibilities of life bogging us down.
This simply and childlike desire can become amplified into something more disastrous, though, and that’s the pattern of wanting to be saved or of looking for a savior.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons why adults might be carrying this pattern on from childhood, so I won’t go into all that here, but suffice to say, if one of your patterns is that you’re walking around subconsciously hoping someone will save you from your problems, the chances are high that someone will offer to save you from all your problems.
That’s the function of marketing. It offers a solution to a problem (one you may not have even realized you had).
For folks who don’t happen to have the pattern of waiting to be saved (or once had it and have worked through it), they might see an especially ridiculous claim in a bit of marketing copy, scoff at it, and move on.
But if one of your current patterns is looking for a savior, you’re much more likely to believe that you can go from making $0 to $1,000,000 in a year on nothing but your debut novel. Or maybe you have 20 books out and they’re not making you the money you’d been led to believe they would. If this is your situation and someone offers to save you from it, the pattern is likely to activate, and you’ll gladly click that ad and signup.
This doesn’t make you a dupe or a fool, and when noticing this pattern in yourself there is no beneficial purpose in feeling ashamed. You probably have very good biographical reasons to have developed this belief that someone will come along and save you, so please try to notice without judgment as best you can. As we say in Enneagram circles: it’s not personal, it’s personality. The pattern exists, and you may not have seen it before. But now you do, so you have a wonderful opportunity to try something different next time.
Either way, people who believe on a deep and uninspected level that someone might be out there who can save them are some of the most susceptible to exaggerated promises of “I will save you for ten easy payments of $59.99.” Once you overcome the belief that this is even a possibility, your natural skepticism will have more space to inspect such claims.
Pattern 3: Popularity = credibility
This plays into the cognitive bias of “if everyone likes them, they must be okay.” This particular pattern is one that Fours are usually least likely to fall into, since a common belief of the type is that if everyone likes something, it’s probably boring and mainstream.
I’ll tell you who does fall into this trap regularly, though, and that’s Twos, Threes, Sixes, and Nines.
Twos and Threes can fall into this trap because popularity implies that the person is getting a lot of attention, which is the unmet childhood need of Twos and Threes, and therefore a major subconscious driver of their decisions. These two types can become somewhat blinded by the dazzling lights as their desire to have what the expert appears to have draws their attention away from fact checking. Additionally, these two types may be more drawn to a promise of how many followers and subscribers they can amass, as well as bestseller rank and copies sold—all things that have little to no direct correlation with profit—because these numbers are a measure of attention from others. If you’re a Two or Three, gaining awareness about how big your eyes get when an “expert” promises to help you gain you more attention (irrelevant of profit) is a great place to practice bringing your own attention.
While I say Sixes are susceptible to the pattern of believing that a popular figure is a trustworthy figure, this is actually a split bag. That goes back to the Six’s relationship with authority, which is similarly a split bag.
Sixes cling to certain authority because it looks like the guidance, support, and safety they seek. They do this while also rejecting other authority outright, because if someone has authority, they also have the ability to threaten your safety and betray you. Yes, it’s a contradiction. Each type has one, and this is the one Sixes live with.
Some Sixes rush into trusting an authority sooner than there’s evidence that the trust is well placed, while others might require piles of evidence that an authority is trustworthy before they trust them… and even then, they’re vigilant for signs of betrayal. And some sixes overly trust one authority figure and then immediately mistrust another authority figure in a seemingly arbitrary way. (We can see this most starkly in some folks’ deep mistrust of “government” but the blind trust of, say, a recent president. Not all of these folks are Sixes, surely, but they are all exemplifying how this contradiction can be held within a single mind.)
It’s the Sixes who tend to trust too soon that are likely to have the cognitive pattern of mistaking popularity for trustworthiness or a promise of protection. These Sixes live in the paradox of trusting people instantly while also maintaining that “you can’t trust anyone” because their (unearned) trust has been betrayed (by their view) so many times.
If you’re a Six who feels like everyone will inevitably betray you, this might be a pattern to look at more closely. What evidence do you require before trusting someone? And is your definition of “trustworthy” so narrow that anyone with their own volition can’t help but violate it eventually?
And finally, Nines will also likely fall into this pattern of mistaking popularity with credibility. Part of this is that a pattern of the Nine is to pretend conflict doesn’t exist and ignore it for as long as possible. If a Nine follows people who seem well liked, respected, and generally popular, they’re more likely to be able to live in that world of non-conflict for longer than if they attached to a controversial figure, someone who’s going around saying unpopular things like, “You may never make $100k selling books,” and “many of the lauded experts at the top of this industry are actually creeps and predators” just as an example. I’m not saying all Nines fall into this pattern, because clearly I work with plenty of authors who are Nines, but just, ya know, as an example.
To avoid seeing unpleasant realities or feeling the inner pull/conflict to stand up and speak out, Nines will sometimes overlook red flags and default to “everyone likes them, so they’re probably okay.” If you’re a Nine or have it as a wing, stress, or growth number, learning to spot those red flags in retrospect and committing to acknowledging them in the future will make you less likely to fall into this situation of betrayal again.
Pattern 4: Projecting our ethical standards onto others
Our tendency toward this pattern is how psychopaths, sociopaths, and clinical narcissists get away with so much, so please don’t beat yourself up if you notice this pattern in your life. It’s a sign that you don’t have an antisocial personality disorder, which is generally considered a win.
For those of us who cannot imagine knowingly promising something we have no way to deliver on, or who shudder at the thought of claiming credit for a book that is either plagiarized or ghost written without proper disclosure, our first instinct is not going to be that we imagine everyone—or anyone—else is doing that. This is because our default is to assume that our most basic ethics are shared by those around us.
Until we learn more about the pathology of people who have an open relationship with the truth, we’re likely to assume that everyone thinks and feels like we do until otherwise informed. This includes being honest, ethical, and compassionate.
It makes it quite easy for those who do not play by these rules to mislead those who do.
But there’s a trap here, especially for Enneagram 1s, and that’s when we assume our ethical standards are the only acceptable standards. They may be the only acceptable standards to us, hence why we hold them, but that does not mean that they are objectively the only ones that a “good person” can live by.
If a One hasn’t done basic work on expanding their lens, they may still function in the black-and-white mode of thinking, with “my way or the highway” moral and ethical standards.
What this looks like in our industry is the crusader who goes after someone for playing by the rules but not by the crusader’s rules. It looks like, “I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that, so doing that is clearly unethical; ergo, that person is an unethical person,” rather than, “I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that, but I realize that’s a ‘me’ thing, so I’ll do it my way and they do it their way.”
When we expect everyone to conform to our standards and don’t see that there may be perfectly ethical things that fall outside of our preferred standard, we end up with very few people around us who meet those standards. This means very few options for networking, collaboration, or all the other opportunities that arise from positive professional relationships.
Not only that, but making it known that you think 90% of the people in your industry are unethical is a great way to get a target on your back. What happens when something that meets your ethical standards doesn’t meet someone else’s? What happens when the crusader is out-crusadered?
I won’t belabor this point any longer, but to sum up: expecting others to meet our ethical standards puts us in a vulnerable position to people who don’t care about ethics. It can leave us incredibly isolated in an industry where success is very much predicated on positive connections. Looking at our patterns around ethics—what we’re projecting onto others and what we’re expecting of others—is important work for any Ones or folks who have connections to One through a wing, stress, or growth.
Pattern 5: Seeking power by proxy
People who don’t feel empowered may fall into this pattern. It looks like cozying up to and earning the trust of powerful people in a hope that some of that power will pass along to you. Eights, Threes, and Sixes tend to be the most susceptible to this pattern.
Regardless of your Enneagram type, if you’ve cozied up to power, whether intentionally or as a subconscious pattern, and then that power is threatened by the source being exposed as a fraud of some type, the fear that this power you were hoping to gain from is disappearing can mingle with the sense of betrayal to create a potent product of justification.
For anyone who isn’t yet aware of their pattern of seeking power by proxy, the first impulse in a situation like this can be to regain the lost power at any cost. This could look like leading the charge against the fallen hero, meanwhile hoping to take their spot atop the podium (depending on the likelihood that you could be successful at that), or it may look like something quite different: becoming a staunch defender of the fallen hero to help them protect their own power and thereby the benefits of that power that you’ve been receiving.
Folks with this pattern don’t usually spot that they’re doing this out of a desire to preserve their source of power by proxy. Instead, they tell themselves that they really believe the person is innocent of all charges, or they dramatically downplay the charges against the person. Eights can use their defense mechanism of denial to accomplish this, Sixes use their defense mechanism of projection (projecting the faults of their fallen hero onto the accusers), and Threes can use their defense mechanism of deceit (specifically self-deceit) to present the fallen hero as well-intentioned and misread.
Again, though, I’ve seen people of every type fall victim to doubling down when their heroes are exposed in one way or another. It’s how cult leaders can wrongly predict the end of the world and still have followers on the other side. It’s quite something, and as much as we might judge this behavior in the followers, we probably want to look at the subtler ways we’ve done it in our own lives first.
If one of your industry heroes is accused of doing something you’d rather not be associated with, it might be an opportunity to check in with yourself and see if you tend toward the pattern of doubling down on their innocence to protect your sense of power by proxy. If you find that you’re following that pattern, I suggest you choose the route of honesty. This doesn’t mean you turn into your fallen hero’s worst nightmare, only that perhaps the faults that are coming to the surface might not be ones you’re entirely comfortable being in close contact with, regardless of the power by proxy you might gain from the continued relationship. If it makes sense, ask the person directly for their story and remember that they might not be in a position to be fully honest with themselves, let alone you. But if you’re close to the person, this honest conversation might grant you enough compassion to keep the sense of betrayal at a minimum. From there, you can decide how you want to proceed in a more nuanced and mature way.
Cynicism
When the industry suffers another fallen hero, when another one bites the dust, some folks may fall into the pattern of cynicism, especially if you have been around for a while.
Cynicism is learned, often from an early age, through the process of having authority figures mistreat, betray, or fail us (according to our perception, at least). Rather than practicing more refined skills of trust—learning what particular things we can trust specific people with rather than an all-or-nothing approach, learning to trust our gut about people, being okay with imperfect authority figures—the cynic throws up a wall. That wall usually looks like, “You can’t trust anyone,” or “the only way to rise to power is by being a shyster,” and so forth. Cynics inherently mistrust anyone claiming to be an expert, which is a great way to have to reinvent the wheel a million times over.
The pattern of cynicism, if you find that it plays a role in your personality, is one of anxiety. You lack an effective skillset for determining who to trust with what, and that can lead to low-grade vigilance about it all the time (anxiety is so exhausting, isn’t it?). Not only do you feel unprepared for determining who to trust, but on some level you don’t trust in your ability to recover from a betrayal. So you go the better-safe-than-sorry route, generally mistrusting anyone in a position of authority. The problem with this pattern is that it that often means your progress in your career is much slower than it might be if you learned whose advice to take and then took it.
I encounter low-grade cynicism in people every day. They’ve been burned a million times by advice that wasn’t properly tailored to them and might not have had an ounce of scientific backing for its effectiveness. So when I discuss practices to incorporate to their writing life that are tailored to them and have scientific backing, those recommendations are met with resistance galore. Don’t worry, I get it. It means that person’s progress in our sessions will be much slower, though, as we have to break through the cynicism they might not even be aware of yet. (Cynicism and skepticism are not the same things, btw.)
Cynicism can look like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and of the four reactions to a fallen hero, it’s my default. I’ll be honest, there are very few industry experts who I trust enough to collaborate with at this point. I’ve seen this fall too many times, and when I see even one of the signs, my habit is to throw up that wall of cynicism.
But when I notice I’m doing this, I have a new option: I can look at them in a less sweeping and a more granular way. Sure, some of their marketing rhetoric seems smarmy and overly manipulative to me, but how do they treat the authors they work with? How transparent are they about the results? If their marketing copy turns me off but they have obvious transparency about their results and many happy authors to prove it, perhaps what they offer is worth closer inspection.
If you notice patterns of cynicism in yourself, it may be time to look more granularly at people rather than writing them off when you get the first whiff of ick. This way, you might eventually find someone who is right for a particular aspect of your business you need help with. Thankfully, they don’t have to be a saint or a well-rounded genius to help you with a single pillar of your business.
Not to mention, when someone you had a bad feeling about takes a tumble from grace in the industry, addressing your cynicism means you’ll be able to extend more compassion to them and therefore avoid the next trap many people fall into.
Schadenfreude
“Karma is my boyfriend…” Okay, another confession from me: I’ve treated myself to a ton of schadenfreude over the years in this industry. One of my gifts is sniffing out full-on shysters, and I’ve sniffed out a lot of them that nobody would believe until they see it laid out. It feels personally validating when the truth comes out and my intuition proves to be correct.
BUT as gratifying as it is in the short term (and oh my god, is it gratifying), schadenfreude is a poisoned gift in the long run.
Indulging in schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in another person’s comeuppance, is the opposite of humility, and it deprives us of the opportunity to feel compassion for another human being having a terrible time of it (even if they brought that terrible time on themselves, more or less).
It cuts us off from our shared humanity when we delight in another person’s fall. The other person is often a victim of their own ego, after all, and who among us is not from time to time? Many of us make similar missteps out of ego but don’t suffer near the consequences because we don’t have the spotlight on us like some of the industry leaders do.
I’m not telling you that to be a good person you need to be like, “Poor R. Kelly just fell victim to his ego,” but in reality, most of the strikes against indie publishing experts are much lower stakes and less harmful than, ya know, all that stuff R. Kelly did. One of the benefits of being married to a police detective is that I hear about violent crimes every day, so that when someone says, “So-and-so was using ChatGPT without disclosing it,” I can usually maintain some perspective about the impact of it on my life, community, and planet. That doesn’t mean that the lesser offenses aren’t offenses. What I do when I create that perspective is to regain some of my own emotional equilibrium, which can help me make decisions from a more conscious place.
Gaming Amazon rankings, for example, isn’t human trafficking, and I think it’s important to remember this once the community starts to work itself into a lather. In reality, these indie publishing “crimes” like gaming Amazon rankings or claiming credit for something that you didn’t write are frequently a result of someone who loves a challenge and became too focused on the outcome to keep their eyes on the ethics of the process. Haven’t we all fallen into that trap more or less in our lives? We became so focused on the product that we took our eyes off the process?
Again, I’m not letting anyone off the hook for doing something unacceptable. What I hope to gain from the above questions is to take the edge off some of the drunken betrayal we can sometimes feel that takes us outside of ourselves and the way we’d like to behave as professional adults. The more we can see ourselves falling victim to some of the same traps of ego that lead to our heroes’ fall from grace, the more compassion we can muster, which keeps us connected to ourselves, our values, and our integrity.
And then there are the traps that we might’ve laid for ourselves years, possibly even decades ago, when we were quite different people. I certainly hold much more evolved and informed opinions on race, gender, class, and age now than I did even ten years ago. And I suspect those attitudes will be even more informed and developed ten years from now! I hope we all experience this! That’s growth!
The problem with schadenfreude, especially when someone’s fall is for something they might’ve done years ago (I’m not talking about crimes, but perhaps harmful attitudes or legitimately ignorant mistakes), is that in rejoicing about another’s downfall we must either divorce ourselves from the older versions of us who were also more ignorant and unevolved (a process that is not psychologically healthy), or we start to live in fear that our own mistakes of youth (and again, I’m talking more about “I’m so glad they didn’t have social media when I was in high school” mistakes rather than “is there a statute of limitations on that?” mistakes) might be discovered and thrown in our face later on.
This fear can become so strong that we hold ourselves back for fear that being seen might invite someone else (especially someone whose fall we’ve schadenfreuded all over ourselves about) to take us down in the same way.
So, when we find ourselves falling into this particular pattern, I totally get it (and might be right there with you at first), but at some point, consider pausing to remember that you, too, have made mistakes, have let your ego get away from you in your own special way, and are generally imperfect. Celebrating someone else’s pain will always injure your connection to yourself, and at the end of the day, that’s not worth it. When we delight in another’s suffering, we suffer too.
I was sitting in bed the other night, chatting with my husband about the latest downfall of a prominent author and explaining why I’m worried about so many people who are watching it. At the end of the day, it hurts to see someone you trusted revealed as less than trustworthy. I don’t want anyone to feel the shame, betrayal, or cynicism that results, and I don’t want anybody to be stalked by the aftereffects of schadenfreude.
“This is really unfortunate, and it keeps happening,” I said.
He replied with, “You should write up something about it.” I’m pretty sure he meant it and wasn’t just trying to get me to stop talking so he could read his book. So here I am, writing it up.
Our industry will continue to suffer from fallen heroes because this is what happens in life. We raise people above us, put them on a pedestal, and expect something close to perfection from them. But living life on a pedestal lends itself to the rapid growth of ego, which can turn even level-headed people into a victim of their own hubris. They can begin to buy the hype that they belong on a pedestal, and the cycle perpetuates.
Then something pops the bubble of our perception. Perhaps our hero is revealed to be malicious. Or perhaps we learn that they are just human like the rest of us, and we demand to know who the hell put them on that pedestal.
Yes, they are responsible for letting their ego get the best of them just as we are responsible for viewing them as infallible, sagacious, superior in fundamental ways, and possibly even our savior. This dynamic takes two to sustain it, but the center never holds.
Thankfully, when we gain awareness of the patterns we’ve contributed to the dynamic, we’re able to make different decisions, and our different decisions ripple out to our community. We can’t save anyone from their own inflated ego, but we can create an environment where people who might have some useful knowledge to share aren’t expected to be a full-package role model for other adults, and where we, the adults, stop projecting our need for a hero onto anyone who has something useful to teach us.
This will make the fraudsters who drift in and out of our industry lose interest and move on when they can’t make a quick buck like they used to. And when the ordinary, well-intentioned people in the spotlight do unacceptable but quite human things, the perceived transgressions won’t feel so personal. We’ll be able to witness them, decide how we feel, perhaps even extend compassion to the fallen, and then return our attention to what we were put on this earth to do.
