Last December, we reported the story of Cait Corrain, a debut author who threw away her bag like no one before by creating several fake Goodreads accounts, which she used to “review bomb” other new authors while up-voting her own book, Crown of Starlight—until she got caught.
Not only did internet sleuths figure out that Corrain created the accounts used to review bomb other books—and that she fabricated a fake text thread with her fake friend whom she blamed for the fake accounts—but they noted that people of color wrote the overwhelming majority of books Corrain review bombed.
Now, Becky with the crippling inferiority complex wants the world to know that she may be a lot of things, but a racist is not one of them.
During an interview with the Daily Beast, Corrain, who was dropped by her publisher and agent following the scandal, continued her apology tour, which has mostly consisted of her making excuses for her behavior while pretending to “take full responsibility” for it.
From the Daily Beast:
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Cait Corrain said that a psychotic breakdown—prompted by substance abuse—led to a series of uncharacteristic actions that were beyond her control, including writing scathing Goodreads reviews for books that were rated higher than hers. It was a “sheer, awful coincidence” that the majority of those books were by writers of color.
“I want to just be extraordinarily clear that race had absolutely nothing to do with the authors that I chose to go after,” Corrain said. “The fact that there were a large number of people of color amongst the authors that I targeted is an unfortunate coincidence that happened because I was going off of Goodreads lists. That was the only driver, and I am so distressed and heartbroken by the fact that the impression that people have of me now is that I am a racist.”
First, let’s be clear about one thing: It wasn’t just “a large number of people of color.” POC authors wrote the overwhelming majority of books she targeted for negative reviews. Corrain needs to minimize that part because she’s trying to convince people that she’s the Mr. Magoo of racist online attacks and that the targeting of mostly non-white authors was purely incidental.
Secondly, much like the mea culpa she put out confessing her offenses, every part of this interview is self-serving.
Here’s what we previously reported about her initial “apology”:
Corrain started by Karen-splaining that she’s been “fighting a losing battle with depression, alcoholism and substance abuse,” and that she had started a “new medication” that caused her to suffer a “complete psychological breakdown,” which somehow caused her to methodically create fake accounts in a strategic effort to boost her book at the expense of other authors, and then create a fake friend to cover her tracks. Also, the drugs made her racist.
“Let me be extremely clear: while I might not have been sober or of sound mind during this time, I accept responsibility for the pain and suffering I caused,” she wrote in her conclusion, adding that she spent the past few days “going through withdrawal as I sobered up enough to be brutally honest with you and myself.”
Corrain’s interview with the Beast was more of the same. She spent the entire sit-down self-pity partying under the guise of owning up to what she did. Only this time, in addition to blaming her behavior on substance abuse, depression and a change in medication, she appears to be trying to highlight autism as a contributing factor.
“I understand how difficult the publishing industry is to navigate when you are marginalized,” Corrain said, adding that she’s Jewish and neurodivergent—because, obviously, this was the opportune time for her to point out that she doesn’t check off all the privilege boxes just because she’s white.
“Especially for people of color, there is another really serious layer on top of that, that I don’t have to deal with,” she continued. “And so, the fact that my actions impacted other marginalized people—and specifically a lot of people of color—in such an awful way, just breaks my heart. And I would rather live and admit to a very frightening truth than allow myself to be defined by such an awful harmful misconception. And by harmful, I don’t just mean harmful to me. I mean, harmful in retrospect, to my friends of color, who are now left thinking that this whole time I was harboring this deep, dark hatred for them.”
Corrain is so preoccupied with convincing people she’s not racist that she doesn’t seem to realize she’s essentially saying: Don’t call me racist just because the racism I’m responsible for had a racist impact.
Anyway, Corrain—who was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when she was a child and said she found out in early 2022 that she also has autism—went on to explain that she comes from a family that has battled “serious mental illness” and one where “addiction runs rampant.”
“I had spent my entire adult life struggling with the challenge of being autistic in a world that seems designed to punish autistic people for existing and, because I am what people would consider pretty high-functioning, it meant that a lot of these struggles seemed really unreasonable to other people in my life,” Corrain said.
Y’all can read the full interview for yourselves, but you’ll only find she spent most of it going into great detail about how she has been affected by her mental illness before finally arriving at her conclusion: “This was not a story about me going on a racist rampage. This was a story about a really insane attempt to make it look like none of my competitors were nearly as popular as I was.”
Actually, that wasn’t all. She then started to imply that the true takeaway from her story is that society needs to treat people with addiction and mental illness better. (Which is true, but in this case, that truth is a self-serving crutch for a privileged white woman who had everything going for her before she threw it all away.)
Predictably, her Daily Beast interview had the same effect her initial non-apology had, which is to say people, including authors she review bombed, have been dragging her up and down social media.
https://twitter.com/AkanaPhenix/status/1757763645428179297
Sometimes when you do wrong and are held accountable, the best thing you can do is take your L in silence. But if you are going to issue a public apology after you’ve publicly humiliated yourself, just know that Cait Corrain has provided a master class on what not to do.
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