Like the egotistical, arrogant little blogger I am, I was a bit peeved recently. My ‘long, interesting and difficult post’ about shady investments got a grand total of five views and one comment. Today, my post about notebooks – published what? five hours ago? – has already attracted over a hundred views. I was annoyed about that.
Then the Kathy Sierra story broke and nothing mattered anymore.
Sometime between 2002 and 2005, I wasn’t very active online. But when I came back, something wonderful seemed to have happened. People were blogging en masse — sharing stories, creating amazing content and generally making the web a cool place. So I joined and made profiles, met people, became a blogger myself. What a wonderful world, I thought.
But somewhere in the crevices were lurking the ugly little trolls: those who do nothing themselves, but find great pleasure in messing up the party for others. I had a couple of these nutters attack one of my posts once. No one helped me out, but then again, it didn’t amount to much either. It went away, but it was a warning of what was still out there.
Now this happened. Death threats. Someone frightened out of her wits, locked in her home, because some deviants think it’s okay to act like assholes. Criminals who steal the peace and quiet we sane people earn by participating and sharing and opening our doors.
Some people have decided to go dark over this. Others will blog about it every day until something happens. Until what happens, I wonder. Until there is an arrest, until the next big story breaks, until it just dies out? I’m not sure. I don’t like blogging much right now. I’m far away from this all. I’m in Europe and I don’t mean a thing in the blogosphere, but I don’t know what to do. Fly a banner? Twitter about it? Stop blogging?
A small anecdote. Scoble once said he liked Kathy’s style. I commented and said I didn’t. With all the italics and emphases, it’s not my style of writing, I said. That was the extent of my criticism and I already felt bad about it. And now this? I am not amused. Not at all.
27 March 2007 at 4:05 am
Nils:
I wish there was something witty or hopeful that I could add to your post. There isn’t. All I can add is my concurrence.
– Jerry
27 March 2007 at 4:06 am
And thank you for that.
27 March 2007 at 4:26 am
[...] also agree with Nils that what just happened to Kathy Sierra really makes me question whether blogging is something that [...]
27 March 2007 at 6:13 am
That is quite disturbing, and frankly, I had no idea. Personally, I believe that to stop blogging is not the appropriate response. I’m not certain, however, what the most appropriate response should be, though certainly bloggers, and, indeed, anyone who contributes their voice online should be vigilant and proactive in their own personally security offline.
27 March 2007 at 6:15 am
Yes, it’s the dark side of the open society showing its ugly head once again. I felt I just needed to point out which side I am on.
27 March 2007 at 9:03 am
I read through her post quickly… I just don’t know what to say. I am aghast by what I read. I’m actually disturbed, and I did not expect to come across something so disturbing through your blog, but I commend your effort to support her. I think she needs to contact the police first, if she hasn’t already, and then blog about it. There are sick people in this world, who need to be tackled by the structures and administrations we have in place.
27 March 2007 at 9:09 am
Actually, all this attention online is going to only lead on the person responsible for all of this hate and blasphemy…. it really brakes my heart. And she’s a fellow 9rule’r. *sob*
27 March 2007 at 2:26 pm
Thanks Smarr. Like I said, I’m far away from this all in every way. It’s crucial that she and the bloggers close to her take care of themselves first, make sure every stone is upturned to hit these creeps hard and make sure it is known how this is unacceptable. Meanwhile, I couldn’t just look at it from the sideline and not say anything.
27 March 2007 at 4:45 pm
I didn’t know about this happening, thanks for posting about it. Kathy is right about there needing to be a line drawn between “free speech”, “social commentary”, and outright threats of violence, even if the involved parties have no intention of following through on the threat.
I’ll be blogging about this sometime today to get it out there some more. People need to know about this crap, and they need to make it clear that we, as a society, won’t put up with it.
27 March 2007 at 4:52 pm
Exactly.
I’ve been criticized for posting this already. As if because I don’t know Kathy or the Scobles personally, I shouldn’t pay attention to this. As if because you’ll always have psychos like this, we should just ignore them.
I think everyone should blog this because first of all everyone needs to know. Then we could discuss who, what, where and why.
27 March 2007 at 7:20 pm
I can’t think of a better place to discuss it than here, Nils. Reasoned, intelligent, compassionate discourse is just what’s needed in the face of this. No one’s going to go out and catch this guy except the police, but there’s lots of work to do in figuring out what we think about it and what we might want to do about it.
27 March 2007 at 8:08 pm
[...] 27th, 2007 · No Comments Earlier today as I was going through my feeds, I came across this post by Nils. While it’s certainly not his fault, having read the post has darkened my day quite a [...]
28 March 2007 at 7:31 am
It happens. Somehow, part of me doesn’t feel like this is a dark day but one that’s closer to reality than it would ever be. Yes, this is bad, but at the same time, it is part of life. The reality is that there are idiots in the world with nothing better to do and this is it.
What we can do is keep moving on and act on what we want to do. Not give in to what others force us into.
28 March 2007 at 11:37 am
Good point there too, Edrei. Obviously, this one event, and the whole issue for that matter, does have many sides. For the people involved it will be clear-cut, though, and I figured: before debating, we might as well just stand together and express our disagreement (to put it mildly).
I am happy to see, however, that the massive response has attracted the attention of the BBC. So the massive amount of comments and posts (the ’story’ shot to number one on Technorati yesterday, and it’s still there) made sure of that. The amount of comments and trackbacks to Kathy’s post was phenomenal.
Move on, yes, but raise our voices now. That was the point of this post if anything else.
Which means I still agree with you too, of course ;-)
28 March 2007 at 11:58 am
I was shocked by this, and although I don’t know the whole story, it’s a terrible thing to single one person out and threaten them in this way.
What also gets me is that people who make these threats hide behind anonimity. I’ve seen this on other sites with commentors simply abusing instead of getting involved in some kind of educated discourse.
Hopefully IP’s have been logged etc and they can get to the bottom of all this.
28 March 2007 at 6:55 pm
Yes, I think the four owners of the blogs that published this are known. They will have logs and from what I hear an investigation is, of course, underway.
29 March 2007 at 8:03 pm
I cannot understand people who do that sort of thing, it is quite frankly sick and disturbing. I feel terribly sorry for the blogger involved, she does not deserve that sort of treatment, it is completely out of order.
I hope things get sorted for her. Fingers crossed it will.