I sometimes send e-mails: The sequel

Add the New York Road Runners to those propagating Latoya Snell's lies

Yesterday—two days after I wrote about the corporate celebration of Latoya Shauntay Snell’s verbose and voluble, but ultimately cowardly, fraudulence—the 695,000-member New York Road Runners added itself to the list of entities lending Snell and her easily disproven stories credibility.

Emphasis mine:

Today we’re featuring Latoya Shauntay Snell, founder of the Running Fat Chef blog and podcast, as part of our celebration of #WomensHistoryMonth. ⁠
⁠
An ultrarunner, marathoner, and cover model for Runner’s World, Latoya has completed 25 marathons and five ultramarathons…

In my post on Sunday, I wrote that Snell “is desperately averse to genuine confrontation. For all her bluster, she refuses to answer to anyone with a name for any of her lies and rancid squawking.” Like a demented wind-up toy, Snell posted this today:

I’ll give Snell, obviously replying-not-replying to my post, what she wants and avoid saying anything she might find comforting or consoling.

First, she doesn’t seem to grasp what putting words between quotation marks and attributing those words to others implies. So I’ll help: If no one said it, not only is there’s no sense in denying it, but don’t pretend it’s an exact quote.

Notice also that Snell doesn’t deny lying about the number of races she has finished. She just says, in so many words, “prove it,” which I have done and anyone else can do, and “my sponsors don’t care,” which is obvious. (Oh, and she’s more than welcome for “the defamation.” It’s my pleasure, don’t mention it!)

She goes on after this to check the rest of her usual victimhood babble-boxes, categorizing the exposure of her lies as harassment and claiming that this alleged mistreatment by haters is the result of “getting public recognition for being a regular person doing extraordinary things.” Uh-huh. She also claims, as she’s done before, that she doesn’t upload her imaginary runs to Strava because she likes showing her work for herself, whatever that means. Funny, she claims to be a professional athlete and she’ll put this on display, but uploading her running data is TMI? Riiiiiiiiiight.

Snell also avoids the biggest reason she is no one to be “celebrating”—her continued body-shaming and racist cracks. It’s hard to make yourself primarily unworthy of adulation for something other than lying when all you do is lie, but to Snell and her various allies, the apparent solution to these social problems is simply to deploy them against different people. No one needed the evidence to start rolling in before declaring this an obviously bad idea, yet No one in a minority category can be a bigot remains an impressively popular social axiom.

If you believe anything this woman says, you really are a fool; if you support her at all, your conscience is diseased or absent. Who among those lauding Snell would be anything but aghast at, say, their own children joyfully exhibiting the same freewheeling ethical lapses? (Well, NPR might, as that outlet is sympathetic to looting. And TIME has proposed that rioting can solve certain problems, while even GQ has lobbied for the specific value of violent protests. But I bet even the brilliant authors of those works wouldn’t want their own stuff swiped, their own homes burned, or their own selves beaten down.)

I already tried e-mailing a for-profit entity in New York about one of its employees lying from a media platform, but got no response; the building housing The New York Times, a propaganda outlet, already deserved dismantling well before November, but the failure of the sleazeballs in its editorial department to respond to my polite entreaty in the four months since then only solidifies the imperative for The NYT’s wholesale destruction and the relegation of its staff to living in wine-soaked refrigerator boxes along the East River.

So today, I decided to try my hand with a not-for-profite entity in the same city. (Naturally, Crouse actively empathizes with the “abuse” Snell has suffered.)

I received an automated reply to this including this advisory: “Response times may be slow as we are currently operating with reduced staffing. We appreciate your patience and will get back to you with a response as soon as possible.” I’m guessing response times may vary greatly by subject matter, too, and may extend to eternity or beyond in the case of messages like mine.

As I’ve stressed before, if you want recognition in running, do the things you say you do. That’s all. It’s not that hard to accurately report the times of races you finish and not report finishing races you don’t. And if you’re watching any of the growing number of clowns who violate this standard, don’t cheer them on. Anyone who thinks I’m being a “gatekeeper” (defund gatekeepers!) over overreaching with this stuff is probably also a tax cheat, an adulterer, or the kind of person who drives after three strong drinks because a buzz is only a buzz. (You can double-dip here; many do.)

If gear companies, the media, and huge running organizations are rewarding people for proudly being unable to adhere to the sport’s most essential standards, and everyday joggers are increasingly okay with the deterioration of these standards, then there is no reason to even support the continued existence of mass running events like the New York City Marathon. Full stop. For this and other reasons, in fact, the sport should become more like cycling, where about the only participants you see or hear about are at or near the elite level. Road races for shlubs—and I count the fastest-ever version of myself in that category—became unnecessary the moment GPS watches became universally available anyway.

But that’s a topic for another day. Today’s is trying to estimate the chances of getting any reply, let alone a substantive one, from a human at the New York Road Runners. I would place the lower bound at “one in fuck-all” and the upper at “surely you jest,” though I may have reversed the correct order of these limits.