The Anonymous Bubble
Events like the recent insanity involving tech blogger Kathy Sierra are a stark reminder that we in the tech world are in a severe bubble, living in a world of blogs, wikis, IM, gadgets and gizmos. For everything technology gives us, it also removes a huge piece human existence – face-to-face interaction with real, live emotions like sadness, fear and happiness.
The bubble we live in – and that those who obsessively read blogs and immerse themselves in the online world reside in as well – give us a veil of anonymity which makes it very easy to push the outer limits of taste and acceptability. This anonymity gives us a greater ability to have open, honest discussion, but also allows those discussions to easily slide into terrible, offensive territory.
In Sierra’s case – she had to endure sexist, abusive, misogynistic and violent comments on her blog, and another site which devolved into basically a forum for hate speech against her – anonymity did just that. Last Saturday, a site called unclebobism.com, registered to tech blogger Chris Locke, posted a picture of Sierra with a Photoshopped look of terror on her face and a pair of panties over her head, seemingly choking her. The image was better suited for a third-rate horror flick than a blog from someone who is considered in some circles to be one of the industry’s top thinkers. The implication was also very clear – and posted anonymously, of course.
It’s important to note that Locke denied posting the picture or the accompanying comments and also important to note that he is working to identify who did. It’s also important to note, however, that he hasn’t apologized and most importantly, that all this all started over a third-grade-level conflict within the blogosphere. Which brings us back to the bubble.
Is this bubble such that we can let disagreements over innovation and corporate responsibility slide into anonymous death threats with roots in deeply-seeded sexism? Are we too far wrapped up in our little blanket that we can’t tell that this is wholly inappropriate? And are we so infatuated with the freedom and openness the Web brings that we aren’t able to recognize that we as citizen publishers can and should censor content (after all yelling fire in a crowded theater) is not within our free speech rights). Let’s hope not.
For all the discussion, innovation, creation and thought that flies around the tech world, there seems to be a deep vein of churlishness, immaturity and thoughtlessness that goes along with it. Incidents like Kathy Sierra’s help clean all that up by shocking people into action, but it’s up to everyone to realize the context and culture we’re working in – we’re not saving the world, but we are changing it. Insular thought, childish grade-school sexism and folks hiding behind their IP address do nothing to advance us as an industry, or we as a people. We can do so much better.