I mean Kathy Sierra, on the Web at seriouspony.com, in Wikipedia, and formerly on Twitter; but as of now @SeriousPony is gone. Here’s why.
Over the years she’s had loads of smart, eloquent things to say about Java and tech education and community-building and, in general, Life Online. Recently, I’ve been entranced by the awesome Icelandic-pony pix that used to be on that tweetstream. So I’m sad.
There was a kerfuffle on Twitter saying Kathy had been forced offline by misogynist trolls. Which would be shocking, because it’s happened before, her primary attacker back then being Weev, always a troll, now with a brand-new Swastika tattoo. Hey, I guess #notalltrolls are Nazis, but…
What happened · So I reached out to Kathy saying “What happened?” She wrote back and I’m passing this along, paraphrasing only by name omission.
…Even after all this there are people still determined to defend weev-the-person (not weev-the-case) to the point of suggesting I’m trolling so people will troll me back…
I do NOT feel [name omitted] in any way harassed me, and that I just was tired of having that conversation, and disheartened that there are still prominent people in tech that support and believe him.
That’s all.
Just don’t have it in me to do this right now.
I hope one day there’s a place like Twitter where the voices of these people aren’t so elevated and overwhelming.
This is really not OK · I don’t know what to do about it. But any time Kathy wants to publish words or pictures, I’ll be looking forward to reading them.
Contributions
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: James Ladd (Oct 05 2014, at 14:43)
I love Kathy's writing and the horses too. Please come back Kathy.
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From: John B (Oct 05 2014, at 16:00)
Thanks for blogging on this Tim, while I've seen some articles highlighting the serious issues women can face online, the issues highlighted in the verge link are disgusting and the more light this issue gets I think the better off we'll be as I hope that a vast majority of the male population online would not stand for it if they were aware of it.
J
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From: Lucretia (Oct 05 2014, at 17:31)
Kathy is one of the brighter lights on the internet. She has endured more than most people could ever stand and come back strong. She has every right to refuse to play that game. But yeah, she will be missed until she surfaces again.
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From: penyaskito (Oct 06 2014, at 04:08)
I love her books and her twits so much that I didn't care that she posted too many pony photos (which I'm not interested in). So sad this happened again.
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From: Marty (Oct 06 2014, at 05:40)
Could you put in a note that the link about Weev goes to a nasty website? I clicked it without checking where it was going, and was kind of displeased to find I'd given a page hit to "the Daily Stormer."
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From: Eric Smith (Oct 06 2014, at 15:20)
Ditto the above comment. I clicked at work, and didn't realize what I was looking at for a minute or two. It's the end of the day - I'm being dim.
That said that link is NSFHumanity.
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From: T (Oct 07 2014, at 03:35)
+1 to the above requesting a warning for the link to the Daily Stormer article - it took me a second or two to realise I was now looking at a fascist "news" site; the sidebar links are pretty repellent, and I couldn't quite wash out my browser history fast enough.
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From: Mark Littlewood (Oct 07 2014, at 09:28)
Kathy Sierra rocks.
I have already read the hate filled piece on that site. I don't think there should be a warning before clicking for the simple reason that sometimes we have to be reminded of the dark side of the internet.
Shocked by that? You ain't seen nothing.
This is what amazing people like Kathy have to be dealing with every moment of every day. It is too easy for us to say, that's terrible, shouldn't happen, etc but sometimes you just have to see it to believe it. Amazing people who do great good for our community are being targeted by people like this on a daily basis. Kathy presumably isn't choosing to go and seek out such sites but the hate and vitriol harbored in these places is being forced into her social media, email every moment of the day.
Sometimes you have to walk even a few inches in someone else's shoes...
I do not want to start a 'discussion' here, I am not saying I am right and everyone should change their mind, just wanted to offer a different perspective.
Peace to all on the side of humanity.
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From: Milan (Oct 08 2014, at 04:33)
Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates' book "Head First Java" is how I learned Java and it is one of my favorite programming books. Fuck these trolls and fuck that imbecile weev.
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From: Chew Choon Keat (Oct 09 2014, at 22:06)
I really hope she can setup a private mailing list like what Jason Calacanis did initially with his LAUNCH ticker email.
Many of us would signup & read. And she can choose not to interact with anyone she doesn't want to.
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From: Christian Walde (Oct 09 2014, at 23:32)
A small note to the swastika thing: Knowing weev there is a very high likelihood that the website he gave that picture to publish is a very self-conscious trolling website, aimed at upsetting the general public while appearing genuine to the apparent audience; and all weev did was to provide them the image of a "slighted social hero" to help them in their trolling. When talking about him you can never assume that you've plumbed the entire depth of the rabbit hole.
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From: Maarten Vile (Oct 28 2014, at 15:48)
+1 for warning people where the Weev Swastika tattoo link goes. I hate to think they got an uptick in their hits because of us!
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