dukeMedia

Man, I just read Kathy Sierra’s post about the threats to her via comment and post. Sometimes I just don’t get it.

Years ago, Kathy used to teach a special interest group (sig) on coding Macromind Director (for those of you old enough to remember it before Macromedia).

Anyway, one night there were a couple of object-oriented, holier-than-thou types in the audience who thought that were heckling Kathy’s coding style. 99% of people in the audience understood and supported what she was doing… they were the newbies, the people she was there for, those who had not yet advanced to the object model yet… it was beyond their knowledge-base. But these guys would not let up. In the end they became so disruptive that Kathy threw up her hands in disgust, and that was the end of the sig.

There is a pretty good commentary by Danah Boyd here, where she points out that one of the big disadvantages of becoming famous on the web is that micro-celebrities are not free from attack. This poster is a defacto terrorists (by the way Kathy, the administration has passed some pretty strong anti-terrorism laws, and this probably qualifies!)

It is interesting, sitting here from the side-line looking at the posts and wondering if the narcissist has already achieved his goal. Whom ever they are, they now have a lot of people’s attention (including the police).

My advice for Kathy is to get on a plane, tonight, and get your ass down to San Diego… there are a lot of people down there who will make sure you are safe…