The Downside of Creating a Fantastic Blog

I’ve not posted much over the past week due to my other commitments, but I had to write something when I heard that Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users fame has been receiving death threats. She describes the intimidation here on her blog – be warned it contains some very unpleasant language and images.

Maybe I’m being naive but I find this depressing. Kathy’s blog is in my blogroll because it’s one of the most inspiring, interesting and funny blogs out there. It radiates positive energy, just like her books. I actually found myself in Borders the other day admiring her Java book and thinking it was a shame I’ll never need to learn Java as it looked such a fun way to do it…

Anonymous insults and spam can be annoying, but this goes far beyond that. For Kathy’s peace of mind it would be great to think the person who did it will be caught. At the very least, I hope she’s able to put this behind her and get back to enjoying her blogging soon.

So amid all the positivity and creativity generated by blogs, this is a reminder of potential dangers. As usual it’s a case of a miniscule proportion of readers causing a problem, but that’s probably not much consolation if you’re the blogger singled out for abuse. Last year Darren Rowse at Problogger wrote about his experience of being stalked, and offered some advice about Personal Safety for Bloggers. You probably can’t think of any reason why someone would want to intimidate you, but I can’t think why anyone would want to do it to Kathy or Darren.

Anyway, to end on a positive note, if you haven’t read Creating Passionate Users yet, go have a look – you’re in for a treat.