Last week a British man hung himself - committed suicide in a webcam chat room.

Some participants egged him on.
By the time someone realized his suicide was real and moderators pulled the plug and a user called police, it was too late.
No different at all from real life when someone vulnerable is on the edge.
A man is dead.

This week Kathy Sierra (Creating Passionate Users)  was scheduled to speak at an O’Reilly conference called ETech.
She isn’t there.
For the past four weeks the  game developer/writer has been the target of threats.
Vile, terrifying threats.
Boundaries were crossed, and law enforcement is involved.

Police involvement is not going to get her safety back, she is terrified and says so. Warning: her post contains graphic content - Death threats against bloggers are Not protected speech - (Why I cancelled my ETech presentations)

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. (And of course all coming on the heels of more explicit threats)

I do not want to be part of a culture where this is done not by some random person, but by some of the most respected people in the tech blogging world. People linked to by A-listers like Doc Searls, a co-author of Chris Locke. I do not want to be part of a culture of such hypocrisy where Jeneane Sessum can be a prominent member of blogher, a speaker at industry conferences, an outspoken advocate for women’s rights, and at the same time celebrate and encourage a site like meankids — where objectification of women is taken to a level that makes plain old porn seem quaintly sweet.

It appears one of the people named in the post came over to her blog to tell her she was not terrified, she was merely angry.
Then he proceeds to rationalize, justify, minimize, and intellectualize.

I even checked server logfiles for the the IP address you mention as sending you very nasty email — it never even shows up in my logs. Not even the parent IP address. So there is no connection between your unknown one piece of hate mail and our postings or comments.

And I’m sorry if you *really* feel scared becomes someone sent you a nasty email and we criticized your books.

But at this point, I don’t believe you are scared. The way you are handling this, I believe you are angry at the criticism and not scared of postings or comments from the site.

No rational person could possibly be “scared” from my one line sentence which wasn’t even directed at you. Further, it wasn’t even *sent* to you. It was on a board *you* visited and took out of context.

What Ms. Sierra has experienced is criminal behavior and requires experienced threat management. 
How dare anyone tell her what she feels.
It doesn’t matter whether the perpetrators are 12 or 60, male or female.
Psychologists have a name for this behavior and its escalation: toxic disinhibition.

Most of us call it hate.

via: achievable ends