As of this writing, there are 713 1,165 comments on Kathy Sierra’s blog entry, the most I’ve ever seen on any blog post. I’m sure that number will be higher by the time you click through above.
It’s every woman geek’s worst nightmare: you step into the glare of the online spotlight via your blog, get heaps of recognition and kudos … and then attract misogynist weirdos who say hateful, scary things.
Well, things have gone several steps further for Kathy Sierra, who blogs (brilliantly) at Creating Passionate Users, #68 on Technorati’s list of Top 100 blogs.
For the past four weeks she has been receiving death threats on her blog: specific, graphic, violent, sexual comments. Then the threats began to appear on two group blogs (since shut down). Understandably, she’s terrified. (She cancelled her appearance at a conference this week.)
So am I.
Along with Robert Scoble and others, I am going to stop blogging (maybe I overreacted but I’m still very concerned about this) until police get to the bottom of this and nail these perverts (yes, it’s possible – at least I hope it is – through IP tracing and other techniques).
This is unacceptable. Anonymity breeds the worst, foulest behaviour in the blogosphere.
As Kathy puts it: “Death threats against bloggers are NOT protected speech… “
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