Bear with me. This is not a meditation on how a published author’s greatest story is the friends they made along the way. The opposite, actually: There’s good reason to believe that the jealousies, backbiting, and professional sniping stereotypically associated with artists, and recently spotlighted by a viral New York Times culture piece, are actually the product of the daunting and merciless political economy they’re forced to operate in.

That Times piece is, of course, “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?”, the nearly ten-thousand-word-long account of a feud between two aspiring Boston-area writers involving a kidney, a short story, lawsuits and countersuits, and lots of social media posting. With its copious drama, ethical ambiguity, and recognizably flawed characters, the piece and the dispute at its heart quickly became a phenomenon: In a week that saw explosive accusations against Facebook, revelations of AT&T’s critical driving role in hard-right propaganda, and yet another disastrous oil spill, this obscure quarrel between two writers was all anyone in professional media could talk about.

The question of who exactly, if anyone, we should be rooting for consumed the Discourse for a week, with just enough human detail to make each of the central figures a contender for hero and villain. I’m not going to try to convince you who I think is in the wrong here — you probably wouldn’t agree anyway — but it’s important to know the broad strokes.