Matt Hanson strikes again

Friday 12/5/25

What follows in bold is something I felt I needed to post as a comment beneath a "review" on Goodreads after I created an account this morning in order to do so. Said review was Matt Hanson doing his unhinged Matt Hanson thing for the latest time. I'm not going to link to any of that, because this isn't middle school lunch. And this pretty much speaks for itself anyway.

I'm Colin Fleming. I'm not active on Goodreads, but this is something that was brought to my attention, and though it isn't important, to say the least, I thought it should be addressed. The above review, as such, is by Matt Hanson, who is a dangerous, unbalanced, obsessed stalker.

The other day, for instance, he posted a comment beneath a Beatles piece of mine that raved about genocide. It's completely in deranged character for him to create a Goodreads account--another Goodreads account--for the purpose of posting a one-star rating. As if he can't help himself, no matter how poorly and unhinged it makes him look. More on that momentarily.

Years ago, Hanson wrote me asking for my help in publishing, to introduce him to people and advance his career, or what he wished to be his career. He went on and on in his praise of my work, while also telling me repeatedly how much time he spent on my blog.

Then, he'd send me examples of his work, none of which was very good. It was all derivative and plasticized, someone who'd read, say, Greil Marcus, and wanted to pretend he was Greil Marcus. One was this jazz piece--because he's the kind of person who thinks that if he pretends to like jazz others will be impressed by his intellectual gravitas--that did no more than name check jazz albums and artists he thought he should be into and, by extension, should make you be into him. He's that kind of person--the sort who makes sure you see what book he's reading at the cafe, because it's a very important book that only such a peerless aesthete would read. But it's all dress-up, all for show, wishes rather than realities. A form of intellectual cosplay that is itself in service to his obsessive careerism.

I didn't help him. I didn't respect him as a person or as a writer. I knew him to be dishonest. Besides, I'm not a cronyism kind of person. No one has ever helped me in a business that is all about the hook up, and pettiness, and power trips, and is rancid through and through--which I document on my blog, so that something better for writers who truly have something to say, and readers who deserve works that speak to them and reach them at the level of who they are, may replace something that presently exists primarily so that the people of that broken system can be the people of that broken system and indulge their base natures, toxic tendencies, and fragile egos without standard, consequence, or prying eyes.

It was at this point that Hanson went nuts. I wasn't rude to him. I just didn't meet him as he wanted me to or hook him up. The praise stopped. It hadn't just been praise, either--it was someone fawning over someone else. Then, the hate kicked in.

He started coming here and doing what he thought he could do to "get me" with the star thing. A friend of mine who is more into this kind of thing wrote me once to say that Hanson--who we knew as Junior Colin, because of his obsession--he even tried to set up his website like mine--actually went about lowering the ratings he'd already done. As if he came home in a fresh lather of hate, for whatever reason, or saw some newly published work of mine, and said, "I'll get him!"

That's what we're dealing with here. When I learned this, I sent Hanson a note. A perfectly fine note for anyone to see. That's how I write everything like that. Immediately he responded by talking about Mark David Chapman shooting John Lennon, as is documented on the January 27, 2022 entry on my blog, where you can see Hanson's own words.

This isn't a well person.

Hanson would follow me to venues for whom I'd written for a long time. Decades, in some instances. He'd weasel his way in with his constant ass kissing. People fall for that. Especially a certain kind of person. Then, he'd trash me to the people who liked him because he lied to them about how amazing he thought they were.

As you might imagine, a number of other people have reached out to me at my site to share their interactions with Hanson. One went as to advise me to watch my back, because there's something truly off about him. He used to live in Boston, and anyone who reads my blog knows where I am at a particular time each day for this particular workout I do. This letter writer said that Matt Hanson is the type of person who wouldn't just snap and murder you, but cut off your face and try to wear it so he could be you--the you being me in this case. Others described him as a noxious careerist. That has been a theme with everyone who has contacted me.

I don't like writing something like this. It's never what I want to be doing, but when someone does something along these disturbing lines, you really do have to address it at least the once, or otherwise you're letting them get away with it, which itself sends a dangerous message.