I worry about saying too much in my blog posts. Worry about calling my children by name or revealing too much about my life. I spent the weekend posting quick messages to Twitter, all the while wondering if a criminal was reading them and figuring out I was out of town and plum pickings for raiding my house and stealing my stuff.
But I've never thought about being killed for blogging. Kathy Sierra knows that feeling. Kathy revealed today that she's in hiding, fearful, because people are threatening to kill her over something she wrote in her blog.
...somebody crossed a line. They posted a photo of a noose next to my head, and one of their members (posting as "Joey") commented "the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size."
This reminds me of something I did in high school. I wanted to demonstrate the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction in my history class; the idea that neither side would actually strike because we knew it would result in death. So I began making threats to one of my fellow students to demonstrate how anything he did I could top. I threatened him so bad that he literally snapped. He wanted to kill me. I could feel it and see it. It took some serious work to repair that relationship, and in retrospect I'm probably lucky to have graduated.
But, what has happened to Kathy goes beyond my juvenile exercise. It's criminal. It's terrorism. It's nothing the blogosphere represents. We blog to communicate, share and provoke thought. Most of us would never think to post our misogynistic or misandric fantasies. Nor would be even consider demonstrating them as has happened to Kathy.
Blogging is about exercising our freedoms of speech, religion, a freedom from fear or reprisal. But sometimes you have to draw the line - some speech is not protected, no matter what we might think, how we believe we are cute, or how we might want to get a cheap laugh.
We blog to express ourselves - not so we can hide away and worry about what might happen when we leave the house. As bloggers we need to rally around Kathy and refuse to allow anyone to scare us into silence. Visit her site, leave a comment, and post to your own blog - refuse to allow anyone to silence you through threats, intimidation and crassness.
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Eden is broken. You can’t go home again.
I used to work in television news. I worked with many smart, attractive women who became the obsession of sick weirdos. I helped them cope as best I could, and offered to play bodyguard when needed. It was a hazard of the job.
When a blogger reaches a certain size in audience, no matter how innocent the subject matter, there will be a deranged sicko in the community. It’s statistics.
I’m sorry for Kathy, I truly am. But there is a dark side to transparency, and the sooner we embrace it the stronger we’ll be. Someone get her a copy of Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift of Fear,” and allow her to channel her human nature into something that will protect her instead of imprison her.
Eden’s broken. Let’s not stop.
Ike, I agree with your viewpoint yet still wonder if transparency needs to lead to hate. BTW, we share some similar experiences. Two of my friends got out of broadcasting because they couldn’t take the constant intrusions into their privacy.
I re-read Chris Locke’s Essay One in Cluetrain tonight and found the discussion on flamers too close to the current situation for comfort. However, even when all I had was Usenet, I never got to the point where I was flaming someone just to see if I could force them under the bed shivering in fright.
But I agree with you – we left the garden long ago and it’s time most of us realized we’re all naked.