Norman Boutin and Conspiracies

"Them trolls are out to get me!"

Conspiracies are the most peculiar aspect of Norman Boutin's feelings towards his critics. He truly believes that there is a giant, clandestine plan to besmirch his own name and the name of Empress Theresa.

Conspiracies

It must be remembered that, according to Norman Boutin's mind, his book is the greatest that has ever been written. To him, it is absolutely perfect, and above all criticism. It is impossible that anyone could dislike Empress Theresa because they found it boring, the characters unlikeable, or just plain badly written. Hence, in his mind, for someone to dislike his book, there must be only three possibilities:

Brainwashing

Norman believes that some people have been brainwashed by the naysayers. He told one girl on Catholic Answers Forum, in regards to one of his critics: "You're young and you're being fooled by the rantings of RPRPsych. He's playing mind games with all of us." He likewise warned her: "Don't let him get in your head."

In another moment, Norman confused one critic who lives in America for another who lives in Canada. He began to lambaste the critic from America, claiming that he was visiting his website, and refusing to speak with him. When the Canadian critic attempted to explain to Norman that he was mixing the two of them up, Norman accused him of being the same guy, but playing "mind games" with him.

Jealous Trolls

Since Empress Theresa is the greatest book ever written, Norman believes that some of his critics are jealous of his talents, and are simply attempting to troll him. For example, he took shots at people he had met on a writer's forum:

Who are these people? They're from various 'writer's forums' I joined over the years. When I announced the paperback edition, suddenly there they were waiting to trash it. From my experience on those 'writer's forums' which contain thousands of members, I know that some of these people, those incapable or writing anything more serious than a vampire story, zombie story, or something of that kind, can be very negative in trashing a work that looks promising. It's envy. There's no limit to what they will do to spoil things.

Norman wrote something similar to a critic on Catholic Answers Forum:

You're jealous because I had a great idea for a novel, because knowing it was an idea that could only be used once I spent years fine tuning it to make it the best writing possible, because it reaches the kids without blatant preaching, because you know you couldn't write something anywhere near as good, and so you attack my work using every device you can think of, spending enormous amounts of time to attack a stranger you'll never meet who lives on the other side of the world in a nice, quiet corner of the greatest country in the world.

Norman has thrown the charge of jealousy at other critics as well. Even on the talk page for this wiki, Norman wrote: "An internet troll is a loser, a failure who can't achieve anything noteworthy, who takes out his frustrations by attacking somebody on the internet or his product which he couldn't produce himself." He applies this to the Amazon reviews of his book, even though many of them are legitimate reviews with no clear intent to troll.

It should be noted that, in internet arguments, the "jealousy" card is often employed as a straw man of a real or factual argument. For example, if someone criticizes a popular celebrity for something bad they did or something illegal they committed, and a fanboy replies, "Well, you're just jealous!" There is nothing to prove the critic is jealous, and - even if they were jealous - that would not immediately negate what they were saying. In this same vein, even if his critics are indeed "jealous," that doesn't negate the criticism lodged against Norman's writing, characters, etc.

The Anti-Norman Brotherhood

Norman sincerely believes that there is a giant, clandestine conspiracy to destroy him and his book. Since he believes that Empress Theresa has a great spiritual message to share with the world, he believes that there is a gigantic plot to stop this message and prevent Empress Theresa from becoming the hit it deserves to be.

Part of this conspiracy are atheists. Norman has stated: "These atheists from catholic.com, or whoever they are, won't stop the truth about the book from getting out." He has likewise said: "The atheists must really fear and hate this book." Norman Boutin has spoken of an atheist forum he once attended, though he has never given the name of it, but he accused them of speaking cruelly to him. Given past precedent, the truth may be he treated them with the same indignation he treats everyone else, and is now playing innocent martyr to gain sympathy. There is very little likelihood that a large group of atheists are out to attack his book. It should be kept in mind that many of Norman's critics are Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, or theists in general, and many have attempted to demonstrate to Norman how inconsistent he is with his own beliefs from a religious standpoint.

Part of this conspiracy are censors, especially on Amazon. Norman Boutin has claimed in an Amazon comment: "When one of my posts gets deleted, it's because I told the truth. People around here don't want you to learn the truth." He has also claimed: "people get together and 'report' my posts to get them deleted." What Norman forgets is that a large chunk of his posts are deleted by himself, and that they often get deleted when he is called out on his shenanigans, or he is caught in a lie or contradiction. Norman also forgets that when Amazon deletes his comments, it is because they are either spam or insults against other people.

In the end, Norman just places all his critics into part of this anti-him conspiracy. He believes these people "follow [him] all over the internet, even to websites [he'd] forgotten. " Norman believes that people scour the internet looking for dirt to dig up on him, and will use it against him for no other reason than to badmouth him and his book. One example of this, long since deleted by Amazon but kept by the reviewer who preserved it on a blog post, is when Norman was ranting against one critic's review of his book:

QUOTE Then you have the Prime Minister known as Peter Blair. While I understand from reading the author's comments elsewhere.......[[[[[ Ahah! Gotcha. 'elsewhere', hunh? Like I indicated earlier, this negative reviewer is taking bits and pieces from everywhere instead of just writing a valid review based on the book's own merits without prior knowledge. ]]]]]........ that he meant the character as an homage to Tony Blair...

As the critic himself responded:

Yes, I had done research on Mr. Boutin's antics and arguments (as most of this post shows); however, part of this was to try to understand his point of view. My reference to having read his comments about Peter Blair "elsewhere" was simply to show that, from a source outside his book, I read an explanation of his regarding a character. I do this with any artist or author, because I like to understand where they're coming from. It's why I listen to DVD commentaries, and it's why I read artist biographies. In the past, I've even tweeted questions to authors before writing reviews because I wanted their own clarification on certain things. My point in bringing this up is to show that Mr. Boutin could not simply say, "Oh, that was nice of him to do research on me." Nope. It's a conspiracy. I'm just going around, digging up dirt on him, and not basing my opinion on any knowledge of "the book's own merits".

To Norman Boutin, this Atheist/Writer/Anti-Norman Conspiracy is under every rock, and hides its agenda in every review. To him, it just couldn't be that someone didn't like his book because...well...they just didn't like it.