Kathy Sierra Gets Her Blog Knocked Off
A BATTLE is raging in the blogosphere after a blogger hung up her keyboard and complained to police after receiving online death threats.
Marketing and technology blogger Kathy Sierra started getting death threats in comments on her blog about a month ago. Then people started posting messages on other blogs. Anonymous commenters have threated to slit her throat and hang her. The final straw for Sierra was seeing a photograph of herself on the blog unclebobism with panties placed mask-like over her face a la Hannibal Lecter. (The site has since been shut down.)
Announcing that she was pulling out of a speaking engagement in San Diego at the weekend because she feared for her life, Sierra wrote on her blog “I do not want to be part of a culture -the Blogosphere – where this is considered acceptable. Where the price for being a blogger is kevlar-coated skin and daughters who are tough enough to not have their “widdy biddy sensibilities offended” when they see their own mother Photoshopped into nothing more than an objectified sexual orifice, possibly suffocated as part of some sexual fetish.”
Unclebobism and another now defunct site meankids.org (where other threats were made) were set up by a group of bloggers that included Chris Locke who has since been inundated with hate mail.
Locke says he had nothing to do with the threats but he has written a response on his Rageboy blog saying that while they were in bad taste he has nothing to apologize for.
Meanwhile, the blogosphere is abuzz with charges of misogyny and sexism. Microsoft’s uber blogger Robert Scoble, who says he too has received death threats, has gone on a one-week hiatus in support of Sierra. Others are saying this is just a case of online name-calling at its worst.
Posted: 28th, March 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (4) | TrackBack | Permalink
