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I assumed an impersonator was at work
Based upon what Kathy Sierra wrote in her blog post, where she made the distinction: "It may have been Joey, or Chris Locke, or perhaps Allen Herrel... the same Herrel (or someone pretending to be Herrel)..." My reaction to her post was to find a way to excuse every person named from being at the heart of this, and her words gave me a way to do it, which was why the post I wrote on it left out the names but linked their own statements denying any part in this on my blog post about this. Sierra was also pretty clear (at least to me), that her issue was with the fostering of such a negative culture by creating a site like meankids.org. If I were to be critical of her post, my main criticism would be that she didn't qualify Chris Locke the same way she did Herrel. A battle-scarred veteran of message boards myself in the arena of politics and criminal cases (as an onlooker), I'm no stranger to flame wars and trolls. Still, I don't subscribe to the idea that it has to be this way, which was what I saw as Sierra's larger message. In some respects, I wish she had written two separate posts -- one dealing with her own fears and one dealing with her rejection of a culture that turns away and shrugs, saying "It's always been that way and we just have to live with it." Surely there must be a way NOT to live with it that allows for responsible free speech! Responsible free speech may be objectionable, but it's impersonal. I don't think it was especially smart to create a space for others to belittle or make fun of people, particularly without retaining some control over the content posted on it, which is apparently what happened with MeanKids.org. Frank Paynter owned the site but couldn't delete comments attributable to trolls? WTF? I do believe a hack and identity theft probably are at the heart of this. Based on the Flickr hacks that have gone on over the past couple of months, it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that something similar happened to people who have a high profile on the Internet and among bloggers. But if posts like the ones on MeanKids had shown up on these folks' regular blogs, I expect there would have been far less outrage over it, because readers would have known the blogger and known they couldn't possibly have written it. As soon as a group started blogging anonymously and under the radar on a site intended (by its very name, even) to be negative the fields were ripe for the harvest. On the subject of anonymity -- I was pressured for months to use my real name if I wanted to be granted any legitimacy when I commented on blogs or had an opinion. And so I have 'come out', at least partly. The jury is still out on whether or not that's a good thing, and I can tell you that I'd feel a lot better about it if there were a way to 'thumbprint' myself so that my identity could not be taken and used the way others' have seen theirs taken.
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