TechWag

: Image via Wikipedia

The entire Michael Arrington spitting episode (instead of a pie or say eggs which also seems to be popular) on Tuesday is not quite hitting the same blogosphere outrage that the attacks against Kathy Sierra made.

In 2007, one of the most brilliant people I have ever heard speak, and whose blog I followed avidly was subjected to death threats and a lot of abuse on the internet. Her name is Kathy Sierra and while she still does things, the personal connection I had is long over with. The death threats and harassment were deemed to be out of line, which is good, most of us do not want to participate in that kind of environment anyways. What came out of that incident though was the idea of a bloggers code of conduct that caused its own blog storm of controversy when it was proposed by Tim O’Reilly and talked about by Robert Scoble.

Yesterday we had an unfortunate incident in Germany with Michael Arrington where he was spat upon. Not just any place, but in the face, a universal sign of contempt for the person who is being spat upon. He also included that he has also received death threats and has had to deal with that as well. Death threats no matter what are not cool and will not make you friends, if anything they might get you arrested or at least in trouble if you show up somewhere and the death threat was taken seriously.

We live in a world of our own creation, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The blogosphere is no different, we have created this, this is our baby. The blogosphere is a reflection of who we are, all the good things, and all the bad things. When you are powerful, like Bill Gates (Who got a pie in the face), or another long list of notables that have been hit with a pie. Many more have been spat upon, and no one is saying this is right.

The spitting incident is something altogether different, and while one can debate if Michael deserved it or did not deserve it, courted it or didn’t those arguments fall apart quickly. Being spat upon is a sign of disrespect across many cultures, here is the crazy part, it might not be aimed at Michael personally.

I lived in Europe for 9 years; one of the things you learn very quickly is not to be the typical American, loud, brash, and demanding. If you break those rules, you quickly annoy the natives. Michael might have been spit upon not because he is Michael Arrington, but because he was seen as a typical American. There are a thousand reasons why this could have happened, from random event, to directed attack against the person. Right now Americans are not popular, we have not been popular for a very long time, and you have to engage people by the rules of their culture.

The death threat is another issue, death threats are never cool, they never serve their purpose, and people will refuse to be silenced. Kathy was not silenced completely, it is doubtful that Michael will be silenced either.

The problem is power, the problem is influence, the problem comes with the haves and have not’s in the power and control that we have as bloggers, or even just people. People in power are admired, envied, and hated all at the same time. We joking laugh about what a jerk our boss is, but we also secretly want to be that person. The more desperate a person is for power and/or control, the more off beat the jokes get, the more dangerous in tone they become.

There is no way to fix this without changing people, which is unlikely.

The bloggers bill of rights or code of ethics will not help here, because there is a power disparity, everyone is not equally powerful or listened to. The more traffic you get the more weird the comments get. My weird comments and threats happen on a daily basis, and start to get really bizarre as I hit 40,000 readers a month. The more I am seen, the more I speak my mind, there are those that want to silence what I am saying, especially if it is controversial. I have even had comments that blame my more controversial viewpoints on my improper parenting and potty training. Yes I do blame my parents for this, they raised a person who is not afraid to speak their mind, thanks Mom and Dad.

There is nothing we can do about death threats, we can take precautions, but there are enough people out there (See Sociopath in the Cube Next Door, and read this book) to make a difference. It might just be 4% or 5% of the population, but when you deal with millions or even thousands, the numbers are significant. This is something that we also have to accept (we do not have to like it, we can rail against it, but like journalists in jail, journalists killed, and journalists otherwise silenced) that this goes along with the territory.

There will always be those that try to silence people, in any way that they can. The thing we must not do is be silenced.