Normally, if any type of publishing news is trending on Twitter, that’s a sign to run far in the other direction — lest you get hit with any strays from the YA authors arguing about their Goodreads ratings. But in the case of This Is How You Lose the Time War, a 2019 science-fiction novel by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, Twitter wrought a rare moment of celebration and community, and it’s all thanks to “bigolas dickolas.”
“read this. DO NOT look up anything about it. just read it,” @maskofbun, a fan account for Japanese series Trigun with the display name “bigolas dickolas woIfwood,” tweeted on May 7. The tweet was accompanied by a picture of the sci-fi novel’s cover and racked up more than 14,000 retweets from people seconding the recommendation but mostly those marveling at the hilarity of “bigolas dickolas” — presumably the cousin of Monty Python’s Biggus Dickus — and their sudden chokehold on the publishing industry. Now, at least one executive at Simon & Schuster has had to say “bigolas dickolas,” and I think that’s beautiful.
Why it’s a 4: The publishing world, especially Book Twitter, is a niche community (unless there’s a controversy going on), but this wholesome success story broke through to a slightly wider audience. “I do not understand what is happening but I am incomprehensibly grateful to bigolas dickolas,” El-Mohtar tweeted the day after the initial tweet, as the book shot up the Amazon Best Seller list, eventually reaching the No. 3 slot. Across the pond, a Waterstones bookstore in Glasgow even added the tweet as a blurb.
The siren call of a small business engaging in questionable business practices is too tempting for TikTok to ignore. This month, it’s a tattoo artist a customer believes scammed her out of more than $2,000. A three-part video from @cmonteith posted on May 9 details her experience commissioning a fox tattoo, for which she was required to pay thousands in deposit and consultation fees before ever seeing a sketch. Once the sketch materialized, it was hastily drawn and in no way matched the reference photos the customer had shared. That was no skin off the artist’s back — she’ll happily fix it for another couple thousand dollars!
Unsurprisingly, @cmonteith declined that offer and, when it was apparent the artist had no intention of refunding her any money, took her grievances to TikTok. The egregiousness of the pricing, and the tone of the emails shared between @cmonteith and the artist, had people frothing in the comments and even brought other unhappy patrons of this same artist out of the woodwork. Ri McCue, one of those unhappy customers, named the establishment as Lucid Tattoos in Cambridge, Ontario, and claimed the artist had shared a photo of her ID as an attempt to get her banned from fellow studios, because if there’s one way to disabuse people of the notion that you have predatory business practices, it’s to be even more predatory online.
Why it’s a 4: The fierce response to the videos eventually spilled out of TikTok and, according to @cmonteith, onto reviews of the shop itself. She later hopped back on TikTok to request that sleuths refrain from commenting the name in the comments and leaving negative Google reviews. It swept the tattoo community broadly enough that artist Matt Vaught is flying her out to receive a free tattoo and end the saga on a positive note.