A woman in New York City, New York, attended BookCon and got the opportunity to meet her favorite author. Despite her excitement and attempts to connect with her, she was met with a dismissive attitude, and it was all caught on camera and posted online, leading to instant virality.
The woman in question is Sameera, who runs her BookTok account, readbysameera. Her content revolves around books and literature, and her favorite author is Tracy Deonn, who writes young adult and fantasy fiction. Sameera posted an initial viral clip showing her disappointment, but her follow-up surpassed it, garnering 578,500 views, 37,900 likes, and 815 comments.
The clip shows Sameera arriving at the table where Deonn was meeting her fans and signing their books at the Jacob J. Javits Convention Center in New York City. According to the BookToker, the author was running late, but the signing had just started. Deonn’s team was “pushing the next person in line’s bookplates” and didn’t allow “candid pictures.”
Sameera began talking to Deonn while a member of her team grabbed her phone. She started to explain how she connected to her writing, but it appears the author was more focused on the signing part of the deal, ignoring her. At one point, she even interrupted the New York woman, saying, “Can you tell me how I should sign this?“
According to the New York woman, that was the “rudest interaction” ever. She detailed, “Got dismissed right as I was saying I felt seen by her writing. […] Felt super connected to her work as a little black girl, so feeling dismissed by her was shocking.”
Clip Triggers Heated Debates
The clip stopped at the 22-second mark, but it sparked a variety of reactions online. Some users fully understood Sameera’s feelings. One viewer commented, “Tired, over it, annoyed doesn’t matter. This is rude.” Another netizen wrote, “As an author… I’m sorry you went through that.“
However, others believed Deonn hadn’t been rude at all, although these viewers got pushback of their own. One of them wrote, “All she did was cut you off and ask how to properly sign the paper. How was this rude?” Another one added, “Just because someone doesn’t respond in the order or process you rehearsed in your mind for them a complete stranger to telepathically fall into line with.”
Given that the video was interpreted in many ways, this allowed for heated debates to spark in Sameera’s comments section. Furthermore, many others shared their own stories with the author, both good and bad, which added more fuel to the fire.
Tracy Deonn has not addressed Sameera’s video publicly.
