Kathy Sierra's Life Threatened / Comment Spammers Beware - There Is No Such Thing As Total Anonymity

Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" (why I cancelled my ETech presentations)
As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I'm not. I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs... blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you've probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy).

Cyberbullying - The Dark Side of Web 2.0
One of the things all this user-generated-content of blogs and personalized pages has opened up is the development of something called cyberbullying. This is the phenomenon of publishing negative comments about someone that go beyond criticism and into the world of threats. It is the playground bully writ large.

The web allows for a lot of anonymous communications, which is the first factor. When people can hide they often do things they otherwise couldn’t get away with. When you combine anonymity with the ease of publishing you get the cyberbullies coming out of the woodwork.

Cyberbullying on the Internet
The Internet provides the perfect forum for cyberbullies, individuals whose aim is to gain gratification from the distress caused by provoking and tormenting others. The anonymity, ease of provocation, and almost infinite source of targets means the Internet is full of predators from pedophiles targeting children to serial bullies targeting ... anybody.

Cyberbullies get a perverse sense of satisfaction (called gratification) from sending people flame mail and hate mail. Flame mail is an email whose contents are designed to inflame and enrage. Hate mail is hatred (including prejudice, racism, sexism etc) in an email.

Only "Pussies" beat-up on women either verbally,mentally or Physically...

A Few Sites I've Seen

What Am I Gonna Do With 2,000 Unique Visitors A Week?

This is my roommate Mike. I think he writes non-fiction much better than I do and his life, at face value, is much funnier than my own. Those two things make for much better articles than my troubles with a crappy customer at my restaurant. The only problem is, he doesn’t get himself into enough trouble to write with the sort of regularity that I or his adoring fans clamor for. Read this column first and then try out his others. Oh yea…and comment the hell out of them.

'Violent Acres’ Blog Rants about Digg

On January 5th, I wrote a short blurb where I called the Venus Vibrance razor blade a stupid Christmas present. The entire thing was roughly a paragraph long and it was completely devoid of interesting commentary. Unless, of course, you think my thoughts on toiletries are particularly revolutionary or insightful. And if you do? Please kill yourself. We don't need you. But, my point is, not only was this paragraph about the Venus Vibrance Razor blade submitted to digg, but 13 of the stupidest people who ever walked the planet dugg it.

MORMON TO MARRIED IN MANHATTAN

Truth is, your first impression of someone comes from hundreds of elements (skin, teeth, clothes, hair) that combine to create their overall appearance. So yes, in the first few minutes of meeting someone, you do judge a book by its cover, simply because that's all you know. That is unless they maybe save your life from behind by pulling you outta the street as a cab roars by. Then, they're the most beautiful person in the world, even if, when you turn around to shake their hand, one eye is drifting uptown whilst the other cloudy iris is lingering on the Wall Street skyline.

> So.....
>
> there you are,
>
> having a
>
> dinner party....
>
> Your parents
>
> are there,
>
> Your in-laws
>
> are there,
>
> Your boss and
>
> his wife
>
> are there,
>
> The minister and
>
> his wife
>
> are there,
>
> You're all
>
> settling down
>
> for a
>
> nice relaxing
>
> evening dinner,
>
> Then
>
> in
>
> walks
>
> the
>
> dog....