The staggering fall from grace of J.K. Rowling in the eyes of her own former fans has been entirely of her own making, and the author isn’t just completely aware of that fact, but actively embracing it to anyone willing to listen.
With HBO Max’s wholly unnecessary Harry Potter reboot being threatened with a boycott from the second it was announced, Rowling responded to threats of pre-emptively terrible viewing figures by revealing she planned to deal with the backlash by sipping on champagne so expensive the peasants couldn’t even dream of affording it.
Not only that, but she came clean and confirmed that she doesn’t care in the slightest how unpopular she’s become in the wake of repeated transphobic comments, because she’s so rich that it isn’t going to impact her life in the slightest. In a similar vein, the smugness was radiating out from the darkest corners of the internet after she responded to one of her many detractors by outlining that she always knew she was going to sink as low as she’s ended up doing.
Doubling down on embracing the hatred, the brains behind some other books that nobody really cares about because they weren’t even a fraction as successful as Harry Potter positively luxuriated in the “very nice” feeling of being so widely-detested, stating her surprise that “more people don’t want to live in these giddy depths.”
We get it, Jo; you’re exceedingly wealthy and incredibly entitled, but it does indicate that no matter how loud the dissenting voices get, she’s barely going to give them the time of day.