people on the internet suck. wait, why is everyone looking at me?

Let's start from the top: over the last month, Kathy Sierra has been issued death threats, both on her Weblog and on others.  As a result, she's been terrified to leave the house, and canceled her appearances at a technical conference.

However, my first reaction wasn't particularly compassionate.  Misogynist fuckheads on the Internet?  Not a big shocker.  I was perplexed by her reaction; this wasn't some idiot coming to her door and threatening her with a knife, but some pusbag who said something gross and hateful.  It ranks rather low on my crime scale.  But there's a lot of cultural baggage (i lack a better phrase at the moment) for men and women regarding how they react to threats.  Women don't react like men do to threats, and there's no reason for me to assume that they do, or expect that they should.

Another thing about her post that bothered me was the way she seemed to be trying to pin some blame on the events on Christopher Locke.  There's simply no evidence that Locke had anything to do with the threats, so it's irresponsible of her to keep throwing his name in with others who clearly did have something to do with them.  However, when i look at what Locke did in helping set up meankids.org and the subsequent unclebobism, i think of earlier days in talk.bizarre when many of us would pile on to berate willful idiots like Lloyd H. Wood, or the insistently kooky Andrew Beckwith.  I think upon that, and especially my own participation, as a bad thing and a classic example of the bullied bullying.  I can always try to plead my young age as an excuse, but Locke can't.

One assumption i was making regarding Kathy's post was that she should either be too terrified to post, or she should be over it.  This was a very poor assumption.  As i reread it, i realized that she's clearly coming out of her state of terror and she's trying to put her thoughts together.

It boils down to this: i would have reacted differently to the threats because i have years of experience on Usenet making a complete ass of myself and others, and a few years unmaking that ass.  My reaction to Kathy's post was along the lines of saying, "Oh, snap out of it!" to someone with chronic depression (and, yes, i've done that).  While i dispute dawn_guy's assertion that my response is indistinguishable from that of someone with a total lack of empathy, i do admit that her assertion that my reaction points to something unpleasant in my character is near or on the mark.  I think it's something that i've fought against for quite some time, and there's obviously still more work to do.

Lastly, i'd like to thank Kim for talking about this with me and setting me straight on a few points.

people on the internet suck. wait, why is everyone looking at me?

Let's start from the top: over the last month, Kathy Sierra has been issued death threats, both on her Weblog and on others.  As a result, she's been terrified to leave the house, and canceled her appearances at a technical conference.

However, my first reaction wasn't particularly compassionate.  Misogynist fuckheads on the Internet?  Not a big shocker.  I was perplexed by her reaction; this wasn't some idiot coming to her door and threatening her with a knife, but some pusbag who said something gross and hateful.  It ranks rather low on my crime scale.  But there's a lot of cultural baggage (i lack a better phrase at the moment) for men and women regarding how they react to threats.  Women don't react like men do to threats, and there's no reason for me to assume that they do, or expect that they should.

Another thing about her post that bothered me was the way she seemed to be trying to pin some blame on the events on Christopher Locke.  There's simply no evidence that Locke had anything to do with the threats, so it's irresponsible of her to keep throwing his name in with others who clearly did have something to do with them.  However, when i look at what Locke did in helping set up meankids.org and the subsequent unclebobism, i think of earlier days in talk.bizarre when many of us would pile on to berate willful idiots like Lloyd H. Wood, or the insistently kooky Andrew Beckwith.  I think upon that, and especially my own participation, as a bad thing and a classic example of the bullied bullying.  I can always try to plead my young age as an excuse, but Locke can't.

One assumption i was making regarding Kathy's post was that she should either be too terrified to post, or she should be over it.  This was a very poor assumption.  As i reread it, i realized that she's clearly coming out of her state of terror and she's trying to put her thoughts together.

It boils down to this: i would have reacted differently to the threats because i have years of experience on Usenet making a complete ass of myself and others, and a few years unmaking that ass.  My reaction to Kathy's post was along the lines of saying, "Oh, snap out of it!" to someone with chronic depression (and, yes, i've done that).  While i dispute dawn_guy's assertion that my response is indistinguishable from that of someone with a total lack of empathy, i do admit that her assertion that my reaction points to something unpleasant in my character is near or on the mark.  I think it's something that i've fought against for quite some time, and there's obviously still more work to do.

Lastly, i'd like to thank Kim for talking about this with me and setting me straight on a few points.