Neil Gaiman is either extremely cold blooded, or the victim of a hack.
The American Gods author is claiming the latter Saturday, after a post to his Goodreads account appeared to call into question the mental health of his wife, musician Amanda Palmer. Gaiman, however, insists it isn’t so.
On Saturday, Gaiman’s Goodreads account indicated he was reading a book by the title Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder in what could clearly be read as a diss at Palmer. It was just last Sunday that Palmer announced on Patreon that the couple were separated.
“Someone with a dark sense of humour just hacked this account,” he wrote on Goodreads after screenshots of the book title added to his reading list went viral on Twitter. “(I suppose that’s what I get for leaving it here and not doing anything for a long time.)”
We reached out to Goodreads for comment, but did not receive an immediate response. We also reached out to Gaiman’s agent, however likewise heard nothing back by the time of this writing.
At the moment, it’s difficult to know what really went down. But hack or no, whenever someone starts weaponizing mental illness to score points in an online beef we’ve all already lost.