You all are familiar with Joe Gazzam and his spamming as a twelve year old girl, right? If not, try Shelby’s blog and her other blog, this blog by 1st Avenue and Cameron’s Utube video. It seems that Joe wanted to promote his book and the best way to do it was as a girl or several girls. I am not sure why he thought this might be a good idea.
My review of his book, Uncaged. I posted that on the 7th and today in my GRs mail I find this:
Okay
I’m hesitant to write this as I’m afraid you might misinterpret my tone as aggressive, when I don’t mean to be. If it weren’t for my niece, I wouldn’t risk it, but here it goes. I don’t think Cameron is a bad guy or means to hurt anyone. Nor do I think you are.
But you are hurting people. Someone in particular.
The 12 year old that wrote a glowing review for my book was…a 12 year old. She is my niece. Her mother is very strict, hyper conservative in extremely weary of the internet. Thus, she is not allowed on Facebook and not allowed to post pics on anything.
So, she joined goodreads and pulled a pic off the internet to use as her sig pic. Just like half the people on Goodreads use pics off the internet and not their own. Unless there really are vampires on this site. Now, she then did go overboard and messaged a bunch of people telling them to check out the book. I believe so much that she was marked as spam and kicked off.
I had no knowledge of this. Was I mad about it? To be honest, no. How mad could I be? She was trying to help. I was actually flattered and honestly though that was the end of it.
Problem is Cameron, without any facts, without any knowledge whatsoever — assumed the worse. He decided that it had to be me — the author — who was doing it. But it wasn’t. The conclusion he jumped to led to a bunch of really, reallllllly creepy attacks on me. And then all of his friends — assuming Cameron was acting on fact — joined in.
Again, I can take it, I’m a grown up. Problem is — my niece now knows about it. She still goes on this site and has seen all the attacks. She literally was crying to my sister the other night. This is a 12 year old who thinks she’s the cause of all this stuff.
Again, I don’t think Cameron is a hateful guy. He actually seems like a pretty nice guy. But you can’t make accusations like this on a hunch. You can really hurt people.
Anyway, I hope my tone came off okay, you never know when you are writing. I would send this to Cameron, but ironically, he doesn’t accept messages. If you would pass it along, I would appreciate it. If he wants to talk to me personally, I will call him to discuss.
I’ll try and send this note to a couple other people as well, hopefully it registers.
Thanks for listening. Take care.
Joe had reached out to me. It’s a nice post, isn’t it? One polite post deserves another, my reply:
I will consider your post but-12 yr old are not allowed on GRs. At all. So if this all is true and I am not dismissing you without more consideration, your sister, the strict mother, violated GRs TOS by letting her daughter on this site.
” This Service is intended solely for Users who are thirteen (13) years of age or older, and any registration, use or access to the Service by anyone under 13 is unauthorized, unlicensed, and in violation of this Agreement. If you are under 18 years of age you may use the Service only if you either are an emancipated minor or possess legal parental or guardian consent, and are fully able and competent to enter into the terms, conditions, obligations, affirmations, representations, and warranties set forth in this Agreement, and to abide by and comply with this Agreement.”
The easiest solution to this then is for your niece to stop visiting this site. Age limits are there for a reason. But I will give your post more consideration.
I did give Joe’s post consideration, I considered it right into a an email to GRs customer service. Because I have a few problems with Joe’s post to me, let’s start with this:
“The 12 year old that wrote a glowing review for my book was…a 12 year old. She is my niece. Her mother is very strict, hyper conservative in extremely weary of the internet. Thus, she is not allowed on Facebook and not allowed to post pics on anything.”
Aside from the obvious mistakes in construction, Joe would like me to believe that a very strict, hper conservative, internet wary, I assume it is wary that he meant, mother would allow her daughter to create an illegal account on a website that I am assuming she would know next to nothing about and then let her roam free to spam until she got banned for doing so. And then she then returned to GRs under another account and is now “crying to her mother”, whatever that means.
All of us who had strict mothers raise our hands. I ask you all, would you have been able to pull this off? Not only would I not have been able to I shudder to think of the consequences of getting caught. And I had a healthy respect for the rules, children generally do.
But it seems that Joe’s niece doesn’t have to worry about any of that and since Joe is pleading for me to change my review it must be because she will be returning to read my gentle gibe again? Why, yes, ” She still goes on this site and has seen all the attacks. ” Oh, Joe, rest easy, she won’t be returning because I complained to GRs that it is not my problem if an underage child of a very strict, hyper conservative, internet wary mother creates a second account, violating the TOS yet again, was upset by my review. GRs takes a dim view of these activities.
Dear readers, all three of you, if you detect a slight note of skepticism on my part for Joe’s story, I must sincerely apologize. I do not have the slightest bit of skepticism, I think Joe is lying like a cheap Wal-Mart rug. I do not think Joe can take getting one star reviews and/or people talking about his little masquerade(s), I think Joe is handling this, or mishandling this, in a manner that would have that niece of his rolling her eyeballs at the great lameness of Uncle Joe.
“But you are hurting people. Someone in particular.” Yes, Joe, but the only person you’re hurting is yourself.
38 Caliber Reviews 
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Wow. I am very wary of the Internet, but I assure you, as I am the mother of a 12 yr old, that it is nearly impossible to prevent a kid from creating an account and otherwise looking around online. Kids are expected to use the Internet for school homework. In many places, they are given tablets in school. School and public libraries have free internet access in kids’ spaces. It’s easy for kids to do this type of thing, and this girl was trying to help her uncle. I think you are naive, and you’re dragging decent people through the mud. You are also going to be responsible for the kid reading more hate, because people will read and believe you. You need to be more responsible if you are going to speak out in a way that you know is contributing to cyber bullying. Besides, Gazzam has had a decent amount of success outside of book sales. He hardly needs to pull stunts. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Well, Dee, I guess you have no problem with his story. And story it is. You also have no problem with a girl breaking the TOS and creating an illegal account if Joe’s story were anywhere near the truth. And then she had to create a second account because she was banned from GR for her actions. You also have no problem with Joe allowing his “niece” to break the rules. You seem not to have a problem with good old Joe at all.
Some success does not guarantee that an author won’t resort to this kind of bad behavior. You need to be a little more responsible, sweetie. Instead of trying to “shame” me into silence about good old Joe maybe you should be taking a closer look at who you 12 yr old is tlking to on the net. You never can tell when it might be someone who is a good deal older than 12. In fact, why don’t you go check on him/her right now?
And tell good old Joe he should stop this now before a lot of parents decide that Joe might have been doing more than just promoting his book.