Haters Extreme

One of the best and most inspirational bloggers around, Kathy Sierra, has been rightly scared and upset by a bunch of vile stuff that’s been written about her online. She has an amazing blog and a network of incredibly strong supporters (judging by the 550 comments and counting). And it would be awful to see her stop blogging as a result of this.

I’m in no way making any excuses for any of what’s been written or suggested anywhere. But something that popped into my head as I was reading what the scumbags have been writing:

I’m glad I’m not Paris Hilton (or Britney)

If you think of the volume of abuse that these two ladies get online. Fake porn, real porn, death threats, games where the objective is for everyone to kill them, etc. etc. etc. It defies belief, morals and logic. But somehow it’s tolerated. Because they’re celebrities who have massive fame and fortune people (including the mainstream media) see them as fair game.

In a culture where we can all generate a level of fame (for most of us it will be nano-fame), does that mean that we need to be able to tolerate the same kind of hatred and backlashes that ‘proper’ famous people have to endure? Thinking about the previous posts about haters, I got some pico-haters, Russell got hit by some micro-haters, and poor Kathy’s ended up getting hit by some proper vile mega-haters. But I’m glad I’m not up there with Paris and her giga-hated celeb friends.

I’m not quite sure what to say about Kathy’s predicament. I just hope she starts blogging again and manages to find a way to put these horrors behind her (or behind bars if they’re serious!).

One thought on “Haters Extreme”

  1. She got some death threats through her blog – as far as I’m concerned the police should deal with it. I can’t see how outpourings of grief from the blogosphere will help.

    It actually seems a bit more like people trying to find a greater significance in their own lives through the experiences of someone else. Like living vicariously through celebrities or the national psychological breakdown that saw millions mourning the queen of hearts (TM) as if they knew her personally.

    I can almost imagine bloggers in ten years time reminiscing about how they remember exactly were they were when kathy sierra first got flamed. Maybe there will be a memorial concert for the day bloggings innocence died.

    I’m sure this isn’t the fashionable point of view, but I’d rather see some media attention given to things like massacres in darfur than this rather small scale story about some juvenile idiots leaving anonymous hate mail.

    Then again maybe I’m just being miserable cos the weathers been shit?

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