It won’t come as a surprise to most people—though it did to me—that in conflicts like this, the better-liked person, or more generally the person with more social cachet, tends to come out on top, no matter the actual events that transpired. Like Tolentino, Larson had people around her—the people she texted with to complain about Dorland. Like Nicholas Rombre, the poet in question, Dorland was alone. The roles of writer and subject matter less than the statuses of well-liked and unknown. So it was when the much-wealthier Chrissy Teigen got food writer Alison Roman suspended from The New York Times for critical comments about how Teigen had developed her income stream. Like Larson, who is half-Asian, Teigen accused Roman of imbuing her comments with some sort of racial overtone; like Larson, she was able to frame her success and interpersonal viciousness as politically courageous.
