136 | Bad Art Friend + Altruistic Kidney Donation

Have you heard of the Bad Art Friend story? I have so many thoughts, but today unsurprisingly I’m zeroing in on the part that touches me personally… the kidney donation part.

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Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.

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• STUFF I MENTIONED

Original Bad Art Friend Article - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html

Plan With Me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewZzIORQKYw

Insider Article - https://www.insider.com/bad-art-friend-kidney-donation-nyt-dawn-dorland-sonya-larson-2021-10

Savy's stream (starts when the BAF talk begins) - https://youtu.be/sOsWU7Ampuc?t=8738

Slate - https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/bad-art-friend-kidney-crisis-donation-altruism.html

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TRANSCRIPTION

Well, hello friends, welcome back to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about all the things having to do with our lives and how we live them on the internet. And today's story today's episode. I talked a little bit about it in a recent plan with me, but I'm going to talk more about it today. I just, you guys like.

 

This is one of those situations where so many different things cross, and I could spend hours talking about it, but I'm not, I'm going to zero in on probably the most obvious point for me to zero in on. But yet at the same time has been one of the lesser talked about aspects of this entire story. And the story I'm referring to is the bad art friend story.

 

So if you do not know what it's about, I'm going to give you a very brief overview. I gave a bigger overview in, I plan with me and I will link the original story, which I recommend you read from the New York times, because it's a fascinatingly written story that kind of. Presents things in a way where it sort of serves like a Rorschach test for you based on who you side with.

 

And of course there's a lot of other articles dissecting it online, but I'm going to give you enough context so that you understand my grievances or my things I want to talk about. But before I get into. What I'm talking about today, I would like to make sure that you are signed up for my newsletter, which I send out on the first Monday of every month.

 

And then I might send out an alert if something like opens up when the calendars went on sale this week or this last week. But. This month's freebie is a coloring sheet of my fuckery rose, which I think is really adorable. And if you sign up during this month, you'll get it automatically. Everybody who's on the newsletter.

 

Got it already, but you'll get it this month. But if you're not on the newsletter before the end of November, you're not going to get this. It's only people who are either on it or sign up for it in November. And. I really think it's fucking cute, especially since I'm releasing the new series this month as well.

 

Anyway, newsletter link, as well as all of the articles that I'll be referencing are all in the show notes. So be sure to check them out. All right. So here is. Here is a bit of the story. And it will say upfront that this story touches on so many different nerves, right? It touches on racism and classism, how we perceive friendship versus the reality of a friendship, plagiarism, writing, etiquette, social hierarchies, the privacy of DMS and text messages.

 

The story basically. Has all of these elements in it, which makes it so fascinating. And on top of that, it's about writers. And while I have written books, I don't consider myself like a writer writer because my books are not that sort of writing, but from what my writer, friends have said to me, It's not surprising at all that a story like this came out of the writing community, because it is a very insular and kind of gossipy commute can be gossipy.

 

Not that every writer has gossip and not that all communities are gossipy, but like this particular group of writers and this area of writers in Boston is. Has at least somewhat of a reputation from what I have heard. Anyway, like I said, read the story. It's a fascinating read, but I'm going to go to an insider article that actually has a pretty good recap of it.

 

Because if I try to go through the actual article, I'm going to like get lost in it. And so here are the basics. It's a feud between two different writers, Dawn Dorland and Sonia Larson. Don darlin altruistically donated a kidney. Now, when you altruistically donate a kidney, it means it's a non-directed donation.

 

You don't know how it's going to. These are the most rare of donations, and I'm going to go into this a bit later, but suffice to say she donated a kidney to a string. As a living donor and then create a Facebook group to share news and information about her donation. She saw Sonya Larson who she, I guess, interacted at a place called grub street in Boston.

 

It's like a writers like where you can get educated and shit like that. I'm not entirely certain what the, I couldn't discern what grub street actually was. But Don went to like writing workshops and was familiar and have been to a lot of writing things, but wasn't, hadn't really like published anything yet.

 

Sonya Larson has published things and his friends, like in a group of friends from this grub street with these other authors and they call themselves the chunky monkeys, which okay. But the, this, this comes to pear to bear. Right. So. Don post. This group invites people to, it tells them this is not made clear in the article, but tells them that they do not have to join or hang out in the group if they don't want to.

 

She just wants to make sure people who are interested can get information about this and so new joins, but doesn't ever say anything and dog. In one of the first like cringy things in this story messages, Sonia is like, did you know, I donated a kidney because she hadn't responded to any of her messages and they had a bit of an exchange.

 

And so Don knew now that Sonia was aware of it. Time passes and Dawn finds out that Sonia has written a short story that is getting some attention about a Asian woman who gets a kidney donation from a white woman who is narcissistic and needs attention. And it's very much about a white savior trope.

 

Is this stuff that with the whole story is about, but that's the character who in previous additions of the story was named Dawn. And the letter that this white woman wrote to the Asian woman was copied from the letter that Don wrote to the final recipient in her kidney chain. Now, when Don found out about this, she sits something to Sonia.

 

So when you changed some of the wording in the letter, but swore up and down, she wasn't trying, she was just inspired, blah, blah, blah. And it wasn't about Dawn, even though the characters name was Dawn originally. This all turns into a bunch of lawsuits, Sonia files for defamation, Don files back there's like stories get pulled from a big competition and so on and so forth.

 

And the biggest kind of thing that gets thrown into this is that when Don is in the discovery phase for one of her lawsuits, her lawyers subpoena the DMS and emails of Sonya, and it comes out that there's this group, text of these chunky monkeys, making fun of Dawn for her. Kidney donation and calling her like needy and, and that she's cringy and that they're not friends with her, even though Don assumed she was friends with them.

 

And there's a lot of like stuff in these DMS to show that indeed Sonya did write the story in part two to rip on Dawn. That, that was part of it. So, and this is ongoing. There is not a resolution for this, but as you can see, there were lots of tweets, examining performative, altruism, bullying, copyright privilege.

 

People were very divided Celeste, Inc. The author of little fires everywhere. Who's one of the chunky monkeys and was in these group, texts comes on and like goes hard on Twitter to defend Sonya, which sounds freaky. Uh, it just, I don't even know, man, but there's like a lot of people talking about like mean girls and that like, so when you was a mean girl who plagiarized and Dawn was a needy cringy person who doesn't understand social cues.

 

And I will say that the conversations around this. I have been very much rooted in talking about the donation, the rate, the way that Sonia put racism into the story, the mean girls, the bullying, all of those things. One thing that wasn't really talked about was, um, class Dawn comes from, uh, poverty and Sonja comes from like an upper middle class upbringing.

 

And. Savvy from savvy writes books who I really enjoy channel. I've talked about her before she had a live stream where she talked about class cues and how, you know, when you don't like some of the things that are considered to be like go shh, or, um, or I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for here?

 

Like, like that's not how we do things. We don't talk about money this way. We need to humblebrag, not just brag about certain things. That the way that Don was just being earnest about talking about her kidney. Is not classy compared to people who have been from a upper, like an upper class upbringing, which is an actual thing.

 

I grew up in poverty. I understood exactly what savvy was talking about, even though I'm having trouble articulating it. So go check that out if you're interested in that conversation, because I found it fascinating and I have it linked in the description at the timestamp, because it's quite a bit into the big live stream that she did anyway.

 

With all of that being said. And like I said, I'm going to keep telling you, like, pause this podcast, go read the article, get a bit of context around it before you come back as a bunch linked in the show notes. But what I wanted to talk about. Was, and this is no surprise to any of you who have been around and know that I have genetic kidney disease and I'm currently cruising into kidney failure and I'm on the transplant list and need a kidney donation.

 

Right? So you can imagine that. And my sister and I talked about this, she has a transplant from a living donor. And one of the things that really concerned me about the discourse online around this, as well as some of the things that the chunky monkey said, Sonia specifically in the DMS that were published upon the internet, that it really concerned me that it seems like kidney donation became kind of a joke question, mark.

 

Like, not entirely, but like, like what does she expect us to do? Donate a kidney. I don't know. Maybe you fucking should someone to give you now that I've, contexted the shit out of you with this story. I'm going to, I'm going to give you a more, you know, moment and give you some information about kidney donation.

 

Not for my own personal sake, but because I want to. Like, whether you think Dawn is cringey, whether you think that she was needy for attention, whatever the case may be. I want you to really understand what she did and the significance of it. So you can maybe give her a little bit more space when it comes to being cringy.

 

Cause sure. I thought she was cringy too when I read it, but who fucking cares because cringiness is way outweighed by what she did. So here's a little context about kidney donation, the wait list for kidney. For people who need a kidney is usually a brown, a hundred thousand people long at any given time in the United States.

 

Every day, people die waiting for a transplant and that's from the people who are on the transplant list. This doesn't count people who are on dialysis, who are in kidney failure, who don't qualify for kidney transplant, because maybe they're too sick. Like my great aunt, Ella, who also has PKD and actually got called for a transplant only for them to see at that point, she was just too sick to get the transplant.

 

And so they took her off the list and she just won't be able to get. She's just too fragile. Right. And then of course, there's that person that like went around the news relatively recently through the university of Colorado, which is where I'm getting on the new transplant list. After moving to Denver who was denied transplant because she refused to get the COVID vaccine and people are like, oh my God, her rights.

 

It's like, you know, the death camps or whatever. No motherfucker. No, no. If you know anything about transplant, then you know that a, there is a shortage of organs and B it is a very intensive, like surgery requires a lot of manpower. It requires a lot of people and it requires you to be compliant, not just ahead of time before you get the transplant, but for the rest of your life, the life of that organ, you have to be compliant.

 

If you miss your meds, even once it could go into rejection. And so transplant centers and transplant. Doctors, the teams that manage transplants are extremely cautious about who they put onto a transplant list, because they need to make sure that the organ donation has the highest chance of success.

 

Because there are so many people in need and there are so many people who will die before they get one because of the shortage of organs. So crony had goddamn river for the woman who didn't get the COVID vaccine and is pissed about knocking her transplant. You have to get every vaccine before you get your transplant because they immunosuppress you.

 

Like that's part of the fucking. Anybody who was shocked by seeing that story doesn't know enough about transplants, to know that there is nothing out of the ordinary about it. Sorry. That was a rant. Anyway, like I said, there's a shit ton of people who need kidneys. And every day there's more people who need kidneys.

 

And everyday there are people who die before they get them. There are three types of kidney donation and I'm simplifying this, but there are basically three ways that one might get a kidney in their body. The first and the most common is by, um, a cadaver transplant. So somebody who died. And they're an organ donor and their organs were fit for transplant.

 

They go to the list and they see the first person on the list who matches the organ. And then they transplant. Now the cadaver organs are the least likely like you, the outcomes are better if you can get a living donor transplant because living donor transplants. I have not had that timeframe in between when somebody dies and when the transplant goes into the body.

 

So the organ itself has a longer lifespan. Generally speaking, um, like my sister Amy was told with her living donor transplant from her husband that it could last 30 years, at least with my grandma. She got her cadaver transplant when I got pregnant with cat. So 18 years now, and that is considered to be outstanding for a cadaver transplant, like way longer than they potentially thought it would last.

 

So on top of that with the cadaver transplant, somebody had to die, which it sucks. Right. But like be an organ, even if you're not willing to be a living donor, be an organ donor. If you're able to, because like I said, so many people are writing and this is just kidneys. This doesn't count. At least kidneys, king, kidneys and livers can get living donors, but not everybody can.

 

So not every kind of like a heart transplant. You can't give someone a heart as a living donor. Right. Anyway, so then there's living donors, people who donate a kidney, cause you can live perfectly fine with one kidney. So you donate your kit, one of your kidneys to your. To usually someone, you know, whether it's a friend, whether it's a family member, whether it's a person, you know, from the internet named Cindy Guentert Baldo, that's joking.

 

I swear. Maybe not maybe a little bit, not joking, but like there's a saying we have in the kidney transplant in the kidney community of like share your spare. Right. And those that's the majority of living donations or somebody giving a kidney to someone that they know. The smallest amount of donors are the living donors who donate altruistically.

 

This is also referred to as non directed donation where you are going to donate one of your kidneys, but you don't know who it's going to. You're just donating because you want to donate an organ. That's what Don darlin did. She donated a kidney, which set off a chain of donations where one person got her kidney, that person had a donor who did not match them.

 

And then that donor chose to donate their kidney to someone else who also had a donor who then did not match them and see what I'm saying. And from what I understand, the letter that Dorland wrote to. The recipient was not actually to the person who got her kidney, but to the person at the end of the chain who got a kidney.

 

So it's not necessarily like a totally relevant point, but I just thought I would bring that up. So one of the things that massively enraged me about this story, where, where the joke. About how cringey she was. Well, we should just like, should we donate a kidney? And people like giving her shit for talking about it.

 

Now I would imagine that if you had not heard about this story ahead of time, there was probably a chance you didn't know, you could altruistically donate a kidney because there is, there's so many things surrounding. Kidney donation and living donor donation. Like if you have somebody in your life who is in kidney failure, then you will start to hear about those things.

 

But it's not something that really crosses the minds of people who aren't impacted by it. And so, yeah, maybe she was cringy. Maybe she was seeking validation for it, but I'll have to say that that is so fucking. This is a quote from a slate article that I will also link in the show notes because it really, I think clarifies how petty and just like fricking awful.

 

The jokes that these chunky monkeys were making at Dawn's expense really are to me like how much it, it just enrages me that they turned her into a joke. Just listen to this, this quote, what makes the kidney shortage uniquely tragic is that there is technically no shortage of actual kidneys. Most people have two kidneys, but can be perfectly healthy and live a long life with only one.

 

There are literally millions of spare kidneys in the United States. Given 35 thousand people are added to the waitlist every year, only 0.1, 4% of our country's adult population or one in about every 7,000 people would have to donate a kidney each year to meet the demand. In this light, there is actually a massive kidney surplus and.

 

So you may ask yourself, okay, well, if there's so many kidneys, like why don't they get more incentives to people to donate blah, blah, blah. Right. There's a lot of complications that come from that. A, there are health implications. It is a surgery. It's a pretty major surgery as a matter of fact. And. While the outcomes are generally really fine.

 

Like really good. Like my brother-in-law, brother-in-law's doing great with his one kidney. You know, he had to recover from a major surgery, but th his he's doing fine with his one kidney and my sister is doing great with his other kidney. Right. However, he did have to recover from pretty major surgery and go through the pain and the complications of surgery and the potential.

 

Shittiness that can come with surgery and everything else. On top of that, there's potential financial implications for somebody who is a living donor. Generally speaking, living donors, medical expenses are covered by the recipient. Like if I get somebody to donate to me, their medical expenses will be covered by my insurance.

 

On top of that, there are. Um, there are organizations that help pay for things like missing work or travel expenses incurred as well as if the donor, if the recipient is able to help cover that with Jesse. And I hope to help cover that for somebody, if they donate for us. However, there is a, there's a very like shaky line.

 

That is also involved here because where does helping cover costs turn into compensation? And that begins to like dive into like the ethical and moral dilemma surrounding. Adding incentives to people to be living donors, right? Like there have been suggestions. Like if you donate a kidney to somebody, then you should be, you should get like access to Medicare for the rest of your life for free.

 

Right. If you donate a kidney to somebody and you ever need a kidney, well, and this is true. If you donate a kidney to somebody and you ever need a kidney yourself, you go right to the top of the wait list. But like, they've talked about offering. Incentives to people through the government, but they usually don't go anywhere because there is a.

 

This ethical dilemma around offering payment for organs, because you can see where that would open a really, really, really dark slippery slope where like people in poverty selling their organs from, have you ever seen repo the genetic opera like that? Right? There is a big, big. Like waiting pool of shittiness that they don't want to go into, which is why you have to both go through psychological testing as a donor to make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons.

 

And B there cannot be like any compensation going back and forth between donor and recipient because they, it violates ethics on top of that. We can't like force people to give up their organs cause bodily autonomy, my dudes. Right. So. Any program that there might be to encourage living donation is extremely open to exploitation.

 

And that's really why there isn't anything like that yet. So the biggest way to encourage living donation, the biggest way to both, but people know it's even possibility that altruistic donation as a possibility is to. Talk about it is for living donors. They encourage living donors to talk about it.

 

They encourage living donors to tell people about it. They encourage living donors to advocate for it, to go in parades, which is something Don did and got made fun of by the chunky monkeys. Like all of these things, these things that are considered cringe or whatever, like no you to humbly brag about it.

 

No, no, you really don't know. You should tell everybody about it. Don was doing. What living donors are encouraged to do, which is talk about it to hopefully encourage other donors, whether whether altruistic or directed or whatever, like that's the only real way besides kidney patients. Putting their phone numbers on their cars with their blood types is starting Facebook groups to find donors like kidney patients themselves are already looking for kidneys.

 

Having donors talk about it is the other way to get people interested and potentially considering it. And that's what she did. And they fucking made fun of her for it. So fuck them. That's basically, if you want to know who the bad art friend is, I don't give a shit who the bad art friend is. What I know is that one person.

 

Donated a kidney and the other one plagiarized her, at least in my read of the situation. And so honestly, all of the rest of the shit doesn't really matter to me. If they had not made jokes about her donating a kidney and how they thought it was, she did it to be needy and blah, blah, blah. They haven't donated a kidney.

 

Now. I'm not saying you have to, to be a good person. You really don't, it's your body. And it, like I said, it's not an easy or a non-consequential consequential decision to make, but don't fucking make fun of somebody else for that. Think about the person who got that kidney, who could have been one of the people dying on the waiting list.

 

Like, fuck that shit. Anyway, that's really what I wanted to say. This, all of this talking 20 minutes of talking, just to say, fuck them. I feel gross that I read little fires everywhere. Now, knowing that the author there is fine dragging somebody through the mud, because she has a friend who made fun of somebody who donated a kidney.

 

Like it bothers me, you guys. And I know I'm feeling a little petty about that, but you can imagine in my position and in the position of anybody. Who is also waiting for a fucking kidney to see an altruistic donor get made fun of, because she's cringy, like, fuck you. Anyway. Now that I've said all of that, do you still want to subscribe to my newsletter?

 

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Isn't that rad? Anyway, they're my sponsors for this episode. They're amazing. Check about, oh my God. I almost burped. And I'm gonna keep that in on the podcast because why the fuck not I've already. General people I've been the old kidney patients shaking my fist at the clouds kind of a situation today, but yeah, check them all out.

 

All the links are in the show notes. And until next time my friends be a good art friend and don't make fun of someone for donating a kidney. And until next time, peace out.