There’s been a brouhaha brewing over the past 24-48 hours or so if you’ve been ignoring Techmeme and the usual crowd. Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users was recently singled out in a particularly vicious fashion on an appropriately named blog called “MeanKids” (since taken down) and at least one other blog. More than the usual sophomoric comments, some comments she took exception to included the allusion of death threats, and some fairly mysoginistic kind of stuff. She also mentions that an email was sent to her that also included death threats as well.
While I am sympathetic to her predicament (she finds herself not wanting to leave home, has cancelled speaking engagements, called the police), I am not at all sympathetic to a bunch who she had singled out, rightly or wrongly, as being complicit in these hateful attacks.
Here’s why.