Bloggers respond to threats

Wed 28 Mar 07 00:22 | Tags: Blogging

The tech blogosphere is abuzz (blogosphere! abuzz!) about events surrounding Kathy Sierra, a programmer, tech writer and blogger. Ms Sierra was scheduled to present at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, but abruptly decided to cancel her appearance. She says that she no longer feels safe after multiple threats of death and sexual abuse have been posted on her blog and elsewhere across the internet; her explanation on her blog gives examples (link contains not-safe-for-work language and imagery).

To tell the truth, I hadn't heard much about Ms Sierra before today, but looking over her blog, she seems like a pretty smart cookie. I especially enjoyed her posts comparing computer apps to annoying co-workers (slightly NSFW language) and the graph included in her latest entry about Twitter.

Of course, threats of this sort are unacceptable, especially since, as far as I can tell, they're completely unprovoked; the mere result of unchecked misogyny. Still, I can't help but wonder if maybe Ms Sierra is taking the threats a little too seriously. Yes, people have said they wish she were dead and have Photoshopped underwear on her head, but is anyone really going to do these things? There's a huge gap of effort between making a threat and carrying it through with action, especially on the anonymous internet.

Perhaps even more puzzling, though, are not Ms Sierra's actions, but those of tech evangelist Robert Scoble. In response to the events surrounding Ms Sierra, Mr Scoble, a personal friend of hers, announced on his blog that he would be taking a week off of blogging. I'm not sure what he hopes to accomplish by doing this. In fact, one would think that, by silencing themselves like this, Ms Sierra and Mr Scoble are giving their antagonistic enemies exactly what they want. Perhaps that's a weak, "the terrorists have won" sort of argument, though.

This is probably in bad taste, but… I personally hope that I some day become famous and notorious enough to get my own anonymous internet death threats.

Check out the follow-up post to this article for more information.

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