Head First Humanity

Most of you have heard of the Head First books. They are a series of technical books about programming that are written in a completely different style than, well, pretty much all other programming books I've read. They are meant to be engaging in a more holistic approach. Anyway, to keep from getting too far off topic, suffice it to say these books are either loved or hated by the members of the community. There seems to be quite a bit of emotion attached to them, because they are so radically different than all the other Java books out there.

This series was co-founded by a lady named Kathy Sierra, who was an author of several of the books and also maintains a blog called Creating Passionate Users. Ms. Sierra has found herself drawing more and more fame of late, and with the fame has come quite a bit of criticism. There's nothing wrong with criticism of course, but what is wrong is that some people have elevated their disapproval to the point of wishing her death.

Did you get that?

Her death!

For what reason? Well that's an interesting question, and one that Kathy herself isn't quite sure of:

What started the wave of threats? Is it a reaction to a specific post or topic on your blog or were the threats made out of the blue? That is the million-dollar question. I have had critics for a long time. Obviously the more visibility you have, the more critics you have, but it did turn much nastier the last few weeks than ever before.

For some reason [contributors to meankids.org site] really hate me. I asked one of them why. He said it is because I am just so optimistic. They are about rage, and if you are optimistic and positive you are part of the problem. It spun out of control kind of like a mob or crowd. Meankids was supposed to be a place where they could be as nasty as possible. It was like a feeding frenzy. Once they started down that path of anything goes, they weren't going to stop. Who crosses that line and makes comments like that as an adult? These aren't kids on MySpace. Anyone who is unstable enough to actually say these things, then I don't want to take a chance.

-ComputerWorld Interview

So what did they say? If you're interested, the most recent post on her blog details some of the things that were said, features an offensive digitally altered picture of Kathy, and explains her reaction to the undeserved hatred. To summarize, she's terrified. She's not leaving her house, she's canceled her speaking engagements and has suspended her blogging indefinitely. Personally, I can't say that I blame her one bit. I've seen some people say things like "...I don't think I agree with any parallelism drawn between verbal [and] physical abuse...I can't even see how they are similar" (1) and I just have to say that is complete crap. One is every bit as wrong as the other, and I agree with Kathy whole heartedly when she says "it's the threat itself that inflicts the damage." I've personally been in terror for my life before because of someone's inflammatory threats and I can attest that the threats seem to have every bit as much effect. Possibly more, because they can instill so much fear that you find yourself constantly paranoid, unable to sleep, unable to even leave your lights on at night for fear of indicating that you are at home.

These actions are horrible. This is an atrocity that makes me cringe. Something has to be done about this. The community should be taking steps to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen. I am in no way advocating that we discourage free speech, mind you, but I am saying that we should make it so socially unacceptable for this kind of thing to happen (as in, illegal threats) that it simply stops happening. I'm sure that the people who threatened her will be taken care of by the proper authorities, but the things Kathy are going through right now will never leave her. So anyway, not that my voice counts for much, but I'm casting my support for Kathy and for others who want to figure out how to fix this. You know, maybe it can't be fixed. But at the very least we should be trying to encourage free speech while making sure anonymous stupidity in the form of violent and sexual threats is squashed flat.