At what price?

Kathy Sierra loves her mac, and wishes it came...

Image by Brianfit via Flickr

I’ve always been amazed at the generosity of bloggers. Let’s face it, the average blogger invests an incredible amount of their time and talents to share their expertise — all for free.

Over time, a sense of community develops and the blogger, readers, lurkers and commenters all begin to feel as though they know each other.  That familiarity breeds friendships, new collaborations and more sharing.

Hard to find the downside in that. Until today.

I figured there had to be some petty jealousies and personality conflicts within the blogging community.   I get it — many of the A-Listers are considered celebrities in their own right.  And people love to take pot shots at celebrities.

But it never occurred to me it could go to the extreme that one of the most famous and popular bloggers Kathy Sierra is now experiencing.  Without re-telling her story — she’s (at least for now) shutting her blog down and canceling speaking engagements because she’s getting death threats. (Beware…some pretty disturbing language and images are included in her post.)

Read her story.  Add your voice to the outrage.  Leave her a message of support. 

And then let’s double our efforts to keep building a community we can be proud of.

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2 comments on “At what price?

  1. This is a deplorable situation, Drew. Until now, it never occurred to me that we’d be dealing with something like this.

    On the upside, judging from what I’ve been seeing in my travels, it looks like Kathy’s getting a whole bunch of bloglove.

  2. Carolyn,

    I suppose bullies and jealousy exist every where. Unfortunate but very human.

    I’m sure all the blog love has helped heal some of the hurt. I hope the cops can track down the morons and then we can put this specific situation to bed.

    But a good reminder to all of us. There’s an upside and a downside to being so public.

    Drew

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