Teen Fiction Twitter Is Eating Its Young

“Cancel Culture” is out of control online.

- Jesse Singal

If you're looking for a case study in toxic internet culture, look no further than the online world of young adult fiction. That might seem surprising: After all, we’re talking about boy wizards and sexy vampires and mawkish coming-of-age tales here, right?

Here’s the short version: In recent years, young adult, or Y.A., fiction has come into its own as a genre, reliably producing a small number of megahits that have turned their authors into millionaires. During that same period, it has begun to grapple with some difficult questions about diversity and representation.

Y.A. fiction, like many other areas of publishing, has a bit of a diversity problem, despite being a liberal-minded industry located in New York City. But while the motivation behind the movement for more diverse voices is commendable, the manifestation of this impulse on social media has been nothing short of cannibalistic. The Twitter community surrounding the genre—one in which authors, editors, agents, adult readers, and reviewers outnumber youthful readers—has become a cesspool of toxicity. “Y.A. Twitter,” as it’s called, is a mess.