I’m slow on the uptake, living in my own world where I write, teach, grade, and look at pictures of cats. But today on Reddit, I saw something that shocked me out of complacency and made me start to take a look at NaNoWriMo.
Apparently, a moderator of the Young Writers Program at NaNo was steering some of the young writers toward a diaper fetish website. This is clearly grooming and thus abuse. This, however, might not reflect on the NaNo organization — except that they did nothing about it initially and, when they did, allowed the perpetrator to remain on the forums. NaNo needed to safeguard children and failed.
This brings me to the question: How will I respond to this? I feel I must boycott, but it’s difficult because I have been involved in NaNo for 9 years. I don’t know how to boycott an entity that is free and won’t even know I’m boycotting. But I am thinking of how to vote against brushing a serious problem under the rug.