Death threats in the blogosphere: We've grown up -- ain't the real world fun?
This sucks, but it can't surprise anyone that it's happened. Maybe it should surprise us it took so long.
Blogging's gone from a small group of motivated individuals to something that's attracted the mainstream, something that's got mass readership and, in some ways, a lot of power. So of course, it's attracted the rest of humanity's attention.
I feel badly for Kathy Sierra. I wish I could do something about it beyond talking about this. Unfortunately, she's been caught up in the dark hat side of the world, through noo fault beyond being online, a blogger and female.
Lots of coverage about this, which I want to help spread through the net:
Valleywag (and again)
Backup Brain
Scoble (with an interesting idea -- going dark -- although I wish he'd try going dark EXCEPT to comment on this; more potential to help)
Buzztracker
Monkey in my Pants
Epeus' Epigone
Micro Persuasion
Shelley
Accordion Guy
Brady Forrest
Seth Godin
2020 Hindsight
Ongoing
Whump.com
Creating Passionate Users
Mathew Ingram
Ross Mayfield
I can't make this go away, but maybe I can give Kathy some perspective. As someone who's been hit by death threats in the past, hopefully this will help her map her way to a happy future. Way back in the ancient days of B.B. (before blogging), over on USENET, we had a bit of a tiff. Tom Galloway explains it better than I could:
=====
(source: http://www.hoboes.com/pub/Comics/Humor/Tyg%20v.%20OM%20XXII)
From: tyg@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Tom Galloway)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Re: tyg vs. OM take lots (was Re: CBG vs. Groth, take two)
Date: 11 Aug 1994 03:21:35 GMT
In article <32btk1$63k@nntp.interaccess.com>,
<thanatos@interaccess.com> wrote:
>Yeah, I can see that, but then again, we have our own special breed of
>pettiness with TYG and OM. I lost a lot of respect for tyg because of
>his inability to simply ignore what was obviously flame bait. This
Sorry to hear that, but I'm afraid that I've just lost a lot of respect for
you due to this decision. See this post for why I feel the way I do.
I'd been thinking of doing this anyway, since the "what is this tyg/OM
thing" question never really got answered. Mike Kelly's song was hysterical,
but not exactly accurate. Before I start, two points; first, this is all I
plan to say about the matter for a while (it seems I have to do these every
couple of years, much to my regret) unless factual inaccuracies are made
in a response to it. Those I'll correct. Second, in order to avoid making
this into a huge thread, I suggest the following; if you want to make it
publically known that you agree with what I write here, email me. If you
want to know who agrees with it, also email me. In a week or so, I'll mail
a list of the former, with email addresses, to the latter.
OK, here are the basics of the "tyg/OM" thing. Or, as I prefer to think of it,
the "OM thing". Bob got on the net circa 1987. He came on with a style that
involved massive flaming at anyone who disagreed with him; whether the
disagreement was about facts or about opinion, whether the disagreement was
polite or flaming made no difference. Among other things, Bob claimed
knowledge of upcoming events and unnamed contacts in the industry (yes, this
predates the High by a number of years). This information was wrong, more
often than not, as were some of his response to questions about comics trivia.
Some of these I corrected him on, and in what seems to have been my damning
offense against Bob, was correct in my corrections. After a bit, Chuq von
Rospach, then a frequent poster here, announced he was putting OM in his kill
file and urged others to do the same. I'll note that OM actually has improved
over seven years; his initial posting style was *much* more severe than his
current one.
For whatever reason, Bob fixated on Chuq and myself as net.gods out to, as
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes once put it "rule the bwahahaha net and do dirt to him".
This was intensified by the two infamous omega.non.grata posts. These were
very funny pastiches of Bob's posting style posted via forging headers so
the writer was anonymous. My reaction on finally reading them was to hope
whoever did them would one day do the same to my posts as I thought they
were hysterical. Similar to my sending Mike Kelly a complimentary message
about his tyg/OM song, which I thought was very funny.
Bob's reaction was a bit different. With no evidence he has ever stated other
than repetition of accusation, he immediately declared that Chuq and I had
done the o.n.g. posts, thus truly starting his seven year vendetta gainst
Chuq and I. As a side note, it was particularly ironic that he accused Chuq
and I as at the time of the posts Chuq was in England and I was driving across
country and neither of us had net access for several days around the post
time (no, I didn't have a modem then, nor was access easy from Brighton,
England).
As mentioned, this started Bob's vendetta against Chuq and I. He cut down
his more general insults to focus on us. For several *years*, it was an
article of faith that any post by Bob would contain a gratuitous insult
towards Chuq and/or myself, whether either of us was even posting in the
thread in question. Many of these insults included insinuations of Chuq and
I being in a homosexual relationship. This was particularly amusing given
that neither Chuq nor I consider being gay or bi something that's an insult,
that Chuq was recently married, that for a while Chuq was in California while
I was in Switzerland making a physical relationship somewhat problematical,
and why the two of us would have let Bob know about this when no one else
was apparently knowledgeable about it (note: Bob was and is in Austin, TX).
At some point in here, then frequent poster Karen Williams sent Bob email
asking why he was doing this as she thought both Chuq and I were nice people
who'd not done such to justify such treatment. Bob responded asking if she
knew if Chuq or I would be at San Diego that year as he had a baseball bat
and a gun he wanted to use on us. Bob has since admitted sending this in public
on racm. Karen decided that email confidentiality didn't apply to death threats
and forwarded the email to Chuq and myself. We considered notifying the Austin
police, but after checking out Bob via our own contacts in Austin we
decided he was unlikely to carry out the threat. We did learn what he looked
like, just in case.
To make a long story short, Chuq eventually left r.a.c. due to Bob's constant
flaming and insults. Keep in mind this was almost daily over *several years*.
It tends to wear one down after a while, and make one wonder what the point
is of putting up with it. Save for two periods, one when I went on
net.sabbatical for a year and a very anomolous few months late in 1993, Bob
has continued his vendetta against me. It's been over seven years now, and
frankly I'm tired of it. In that time, with the exception of the every few
years need to explain just what the backhistory is for newcomers, I've at
least 95% of the time limited myself to correcting only factual errors Bob
has made or ignored him. Meanwhile, Bob has been the Energizer Bunny; he
keeps going and going and going....
This year I've decided that I've no particular reason to be nice about Bob.
I'm not going out of my way to flame him, but I'm not going to be particularly
nice about correcting his mistakes (still the only posts from him I followup
on). I've no reason to; he's been carrying on a pointless vendetta against
me for seven years. Ignoring him doesn't work; I've tried that for extended
periods over the years. I've done nothing to deserve his treatment of me, and
after seven years have no reason to believe he'll stop short of the reason
he stopped with Chuq and stopped, so I'm told, with me for a year. Namely,
I leave racm. I see no reason why I should let him deprive me of posting
here. Also, to a degree, I suspect that "living well is the best revenge".
Over the years, based on Squiddy Favorite r.a.c.er results, the votes Bob
got when he ran for Squiddy administrator (quite amazing; out of three people,
he got as many votes amounting to "Cancel the awards rather than let him
run them" as either of the two near tied front runners got in positive votes.
To my knowledge, no other r.a.c. election has ever seen *any* such negative
votes), and the result of the r.a.c. FAQ election it seem pretty clear that
a lot more r.a.c.ers consider me a useful member of the group than do Bob.
And based on his posts over the years, I honestly think that his core reason
for his behavior amounts to jealousy over his lack of respect here.
Actually, I somewhat pity Bob. The thing is, he could actually be a quite
respected r.a.c.er if he'd stuck to his not inconsiderable trivia knowledge
and occasional accurate news tidbits. But for whatever reason, he hit the
net in such a way that he built up a bad net.rep that'd take anyone years
to overcome...even if he hadn't spent those years further cementing that
rep. He knows his rep is bad, and pretty much all he has left is maintaining
the trap he's set for himself. Still, while I pity him, it doesn't mean that
I feel he's in any way a victim here, nor do I feel any guilt about not
being nice to someone who has engaged in a one sided vendetta, including a
death threat and slams at friends of mine, for seven years. I doubt many
or even any of you would not feel the same way after seven years of such.
Still, the same offer that's stood for at least five years still stands.
If Bob knocks off the insults, I'll not post anything about him or in
response to him save for simple factual corrections of inaccuracies. If
people have a problem with the last, sorry, but I'll do that for anyone
here...and if you think about it, you'll realize that I've never complained
about being corrected when I've made factual errors (most recently, I believe,
when I mistakenly wrote The Cat was Greer Garson rather than Greer Grant
Nelson; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. :-)).
It's been a one-sided vendetta for years; it's up to the one side to stop it.
======
Me again. One of the things to realize about this kind of situation is that even if you *know* the threat is empty, viscerally, it doesn't matter. Kathy did the right thing here, taking steps to protect herself and getting the cops involved, since this situation is way beyond what I ran into -- the level of meanness and anger is scary to me, and I'm not even remotely involved -- it almost sounds like this was some kind of boy-clique idea of fun, but it quickly went beyond the boundaries of acceptabllity. And the first rule is: do what you need to do to be safe, and to try to feel safe. With Omega, to be honest, I always felt more pity towards the fanboy than anything else; I didn't leave RAC out of fear or anger, he basically wore me down until I no longer cared (the same basic reason is why Laurie and I stopped running our hockey lists -- I got tired of trying to protect the list from Roger Maynard, and the baby trolls on the sharks list finally made me decide to spend my time elsewhere -- when you run something you no longer enjoy, you're doing nobody a favor, so handing it off was good for everyone)
Even knowing the threat is hollow -- it affects you, it changes how you think, how you react to people. I remember one day at Baycon (a local sci-fi con) where I was sitting with some people talking, and someone came up and asked "are you chuq?" -- and I found myself standing up, having somehow put a chair between myself and the person. I don't know who was freaked more, myself for doing it or the poor guy who just wanted to introduce himself, but I settled myself down and we got back to normal -- but for those who think this is some kind of harmless fun, it's a great example of what's likely going through Kathy's head right now.
I've noticed that the trolls and griefers have gotten nastier and meaner over the years. What nobody knows, not even Laurie, is that a few years ago, I had a second trip down this particular memory lane. I'd decided to not talk about it, but now, I think, it's time. On a blog entry a while back, I made a comment about how we used a rented box as our public address to make it tougher for people to find us -- we've done that since the USENET days, and will until we drop off the net forever; people who put a home address or a personal phone number online are, to me, insane, they're one troll or stalker away from an absolutely miserable life, and perhaps worse. Email is easy to filter.
Some things, though, aren't so easy to ignore. I went out front a few days after the above (to me, very innocent posting) to a crude package on the porch, with 'happy birthday chuq" on it. Note: months away from my birthday. I brought it in with that sense of dread where you know what you're going to find, only to find it was a lot worse. Expecting (in the words of Mike Rowe), a present of "poo", instead, I quickly saw that someone had mutilated a small animal (hamster, or perhaps gopher), told laurie is was just a goofy joke by someone, and went and threw it out. I posted a note on the blog, cryptically noting that once was a joke (albeit in bad taste), twice was a felony, to let whoever did it know I got it, but that I expected it to end there. And it did.
except, of course, I still think about it at times, and I still keep an eye out, and there are times when I've wondered if it should have gone to the police. As it turns out, I think I was right taht it was a griefer and nothing more serious -- but you never know for sure. If there'd been more than that, like Kathy, I'd have taken it to the authorities. Mostly, I was more interested in quiet than justice. And it's part of why I'm really happy to be a minor player in the blog world and not having to worry about the attraction of being an "A lister", whatever that is. Stalkers are over-rated, you can have them, folks.
To Kathy, a few words: you're doing the right thing. First rule is to be safe, second rule is to feel safe. Do whatever you need to do to get there. But be wary of allowing this to cause you to build a wall and a moat; down that road, THEY WIN. You need to get along with your life, so you need to get to a point where you feel comfortable doing so. Expect it to be stressful and be careful, but get back on the horse when you can. And chances are, you'll never be quite so open in public, at least for a long time.
And to the rest of the net: welcome to the real world, where it's not quite so warm and fuzzy any more. Life's changed a lot since the days when you could post on USENET and invite everyone to a party at your house.... But the same is true in the non-virtual world, too. This is a hard lesson for some on-line folks to learn, but "the net" isn't better than the real word, it's just more virtual, and as it grows, the problems of the real world grow into the online world as well.
I'd hope that this will finally force the long-delayed discussion on the real role of anonymity on the net -- it's given a priority and a status well beyond its REAL needs, and we usually design systems that don't enable anonymity as much as abuse, and in all honesty, the vast majority of usage of anonymity on the net is for abusive or illegal purposes. Some segments have always argued it's a necessary evil -- but now, maybe, we can start a real dialog about how to enable anonymity with responsibility, and not just badly designed systems that let the griefers play without limit...
But I doubt it.... And honestly, I no longer see this as something I feel like fighting for, but if someone else takes up the idea, I'll happily join the conversation.
Mostly, though, I want to make sure Kathy comes out of this okay -- so Kathy, if I can help, even to talk, or just listen, drop me a note. And I'll buy you a beer somewhere, sometime. And watch your back while you drink it...
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