Tech bloggers wage uncivil war
Last week, two of blogworld’s most prominent sites screeched to a halt — due not to an outage, but an outrage.
Technology bloggers Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users and Robert Scoble of Scobleizer (both rank among the Top 50 most-linked-to blogs indexed by the Technorati search engine) stopped posting to their main sites in the wake of online attacks directed at Sierra and Scoble’s wife, Maryam.
Scoble pledged to take a week off, but continued posting to his Twitter short-message blog. There, he railed against sites that don’t moderate comments. Scoble even called for a boycott of Digg.com, charging the news aggregator is turning into a “sewer” of misogynist remarks and “bear[s] a lot [of] blame for this culture.”
Sierra, who received death threats in her blog’s comment section, canceled two appearances at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. “I have no idea if I’ll ever post again,” she wrote. “I suspect I will. But for now, I have a lot to rethink.”
Beyond the violent threats, Sierra was reacting to vile posts about her on two now-deleted blogs, meankids.org and unclebobism.wordpress.com. One item on MeanKids included a picture of Sierra next to one of a hangman’s rope. “The only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size,” a member wrote.
A post on the other site included a photo illustration of Sierra muzzled by a pair of panties, open mouth visible through the sheer material. “I dream of Kathy Sierra … Head first,” the text read.
The incident sent the tech blogging community into uproar. By Thursday “Kathy Sierra” was the most-searched term on Technorati. One reason: The sites that hosted the attacks were created by other prominent bloggers, including “The Cluetrain Manifesto” co-author Chris Locke, who uses the nom de Web RageBoy.
“I do not like Kathy Sierra,” Locke wrote on rageboy.com. But he denied authoring the offensive posts about her at MeanKids and Unclebobism. In fact, Locke added, he “nuked” the latter site “when I saw Kathy’s understandably strong objections.”
Other bloggers Sierra criticized for supporting the sites also denied launching the attacks. These included Frank Paynter of Listics.com, who posted an apology in the comment section of Sierra’s blog (she accepted it). Paynter also explained the motivation behind MeanKids in a post at his own site.
“MeanKids was purposeful anarchy,” he wrote. “I thought the people at MeanKids would create art and criticism, pointed and insulting satire, but not foster a climate of fear.”
Misogynistic posts, such as those directed at Sierra and Maryam Scoble, led Paynter to pull the plug on MeanKids, he added.
Swimming against the tide of support for Sierra online, some bloggers accused her of overreacting to the attacks and even the death threats.
Dave Winer of Scripting News called MeanKids “pathetic,” but wrote that “Locke and Paynter are pretty harmless.”
Right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin, known for launching Ann Coulter-style attacks on her enemies, advised Sierra to toughen up and posted some of the disgusting death wishes she’s received at MichelleMalkin.com.
“Report the serious threats to law enforcement,” Malkin suggested. “Keep blogging. Don’t cut and run.”
Like Sierra, Malkin and many other bloggers and journalists, I’ve received violent threats from readers. One, apparently objecting to a column I wrote disparaging American Nazis, even sent an anonymous package of Nazi literature to my home.
The thing about these threats is, they’re almost always anonymous. And they usually dissipate in the harsh light of day. But that “usually” means Sierra was justified in feeling terrorized.
And in a culture that creates an “America’s Next Top Model” episode featuring shots of artfully “murdered” models, it’s prudent for women bloggers to be especially sensitive to violent threats.