While Arrington is even more insufferable than Sierra, he is an expert in the mechanics of trolling. He knows what he's doing: he's judged that the hype-value of publicising his detractors outweighs the foolishness of feeding the trolls, and I think he's probably right.
He's not going to get taken hook, line, and sinker like Kathy Sierra did. She managed to prove her attackers correct (at least regarding her incompetence) in her reaction to them. That is the real lesson of the Kathy Sierra debacle, and why it is one of the most epic trolls of all time.
Is there a reliable summary somewhere of what all happened in the Kathy Sierra incident? I mostly ignored it at the time, but now I'm curious as to how that all went down and what went wrong.
"Kathy hollers like a stuck pig as she wonders why the trolls escalated to magnitudes which she could no longer control. The answer is obvious: she fought the LOL. The LOL won. She flew off the handle trying to silence criticism of her books, and this is what she got."
For starters, the literal and metaphorical are not mutually exclusive. He literally (in the text) said she "got the train run on her", and in the context of an outrageous troll it's a metaphor for her vapid self-promotion and the co-dependent nature of the 'tech' conference presenter scene.
She's supposedly a programmer, but she made a career out of giving the same tacky clipart presentations about generic PR & Marketing bullshit over and over. She fit right into the circle-jerk with Scoble et. al.. Some people found her constant paid presence at the conferences they went to obnoxious and wished she'd STFU, so they started griefing her. She was egotistical enough to think that anyone cared enough about hating her to make those "death threats" remotely meaningful, and she did exactly what they wanted.
My background: I have spoken at OSCON, SXSW, Webstock, RailsConf, and more -- venues shared with Kathy Sierra -- and I have been an OSCON organizer, and I was behind the creation of the new "People" track. I am a programmer, and a usability expert.
Allow me to respond to your points:
A) she doesn't pretend to speak as a programmer
B) her stuff is not generic PR & marketing, it's about user engagement and results in concrete recommendations about the business of building software, AND
C) she cites psychological research, not marketing handbooks (she's pretty damn current too, the lady does her homework)
D) she doesn't name drop or publicity whore, podcast, screencast, chum up to people for photos or videos, or write product reviews (unlike Scobl
E) she actually made her career with the invention of the redonkulously succcessful Head First book series, and that is why she is paid to speak -- tech books sell like ass... except hers (and Missing Manual, another O'Reilly line)
F) Her talks are a bit repetitive, but I wasn't aware that giving the same talk (slightly updated) a few different times was reason for death threats to be acceptable.
Would I have reacted in the same manner?
No, but then again, I'm not Kathy Sierra, I am a 24-year-old girl who grew up online, and don't even have a hamster to worry about much less a teenaged daughter.
I simply cannot fathom the ridiculousness of accusing Kathy of "vapid self-promotion" (totally unfounded) and basically suggesting that she was asking for it.
It has "socially disabled adolescent boy" written all over it. Just like the original "griefing" and threats.
For what it's worth, the origin of "griefing" is not found in the value (or lack thereof) of a person's conference talks.
If that were the case, then just about every conference speaker would get "griefed" this way, because speakers are uniformly unprepared, unrehearsed, completely unaware of the separation of "What I want to say" and "what my audience wants to hear," incapable of making it 3 sentences without stuttering, couldn't design a legible slide to save their hides, and leave the audience wondering where the hell their 45 minutes have gone.
It is arrogance, it is disrespect, and it is absolutely fucking unprofessional. It's also universal.
No, it comes from a feeling of insecurity.
You get somebody towards whom "everyone" feels warmly disposed (like Kathy), and the people on the fringes -- who feel their own brilliance is being ignored -- hate this interloper, who adds no value, who isn't even one of us for fuck's sake! And people like him/her! Act as if they are god's gift to whatever!
Out comes the viciousness.
I've experienced this myself.
I've never received death threats, but I did have my own personal troll, who'd come into the framework IRC channel and flood it with nasty, nasty things, making it impossible for me or anyone else to hold a conversation, and photoshop my pictures in rude ways.
I know who did it -- prominent people.
These were smart, smart guys. They had a lot going for them. But in their eyes, it was a valuable use of their time to harrass a 20yo girl who wrote some tutorials that people loved.
You have to question the ultimate utility of a person who'd rather harrass some person who's off doing his/her own thing, rather than creating more great shit.
Now me, I am nothing if not ballsy. I know who these people are, but I never bothered to tell them I knew. Now they both treat me with respect, even like me and use my ideas for their stuff. All the while, I quietly prove that I am the better man.
But I do not think that being ballsy makes me a better person than someone who is not ballsy.
"You get somebody towards whom "everyone" feels warmly disposed (like Kathy), and the people on the fringes -- who feel their own brilliance is being ignored -- hate this interloper, who adds no value, who isn't even one of us for fuck's sake! And people like him/her! Act as if they are god's gift to whatever!"
You understand!
You're right that the attacks come from insecurity -- but the insecurity is not rooted in "I'm being ignored", it's "the emperor has no clothes!". They can't see a way to make an honest non-anon criticism: the target wouldn't accept it, and the fawning crowd would lynch him. "How the hell is this person ever going to find out that not everyone thinks they're hot shit?" races through their feverish mind. Taking a few seconds to send them some anonymous vitriol will sure alert them to the fact that they are pissing someone off!
You realize that it's only in the insecure attacker's mind that the target of the abuse thinks she is untouchably hot shit, right?
Only weaklings think they need to go around reminding other people that they are not gods, because the weaklings believe they themselves are the rightful gods.
Otherwise they wouldn't be intimidated by it.
Or think that somebody died & appointed them Head of the De-Godding Squad.
(The only people I've ever met who thought it was their duty to go around telling others how good they aren't? Insecure assholes.)
You mention they are smart people. Do you mean there is a utilitarian motive to griefing, at least in the large scale cases? Effective trolling seems to efficiently polarize issues. When something is polarized it becomes much more discrete and easier to manage. That's why partisan politics do better than third options or bipartisanship.
That comment was aimed at a general purpose behind trolling. As for Kathy Sierra I don't know anything the issue, but I can make up something.
Say these people represent the status quo for tutorials. Sierra starts a whole new way of doing tutorials. What she does is also create a space for other new competitors to emerge, i.e. there are now a number of new ideas that can be combined in unique ways. This threatens to take even more market share from the original publishers. So, they polarize public opinion in regard to Sierra and her detractors. Now, no one looks at combining ideas from either party, just one or the other. Emerging market effectively eliminated. Additionally, the emerging market can no longer give momentum to Sierra's efforts. So, this indirectly damages Sierra's market too.
"But in their eyes, it was a valuable use of their time to harrass a 20yo girl"
Ah, out comes the "girl card". I instantly understand why you were trolled, then. Demanding special treatment because of gender or race is an excellent way to inspire animosity and often leads to attacks back along the same lines by which you claim exceptionality.
So why say it then? There is no other credible reason to mention her gender like that. It's a plea to victimhood, consciously or not I can't say. If you have a plausible alternative explanation to why someone would emphasise their minority status when complaining about being mistreated in some way, I'm all ears.
I'm not even sure what you mean by "trolling" so I can't say whether I agree or not. I suppose that if you define trolling as "saying bad things" then yeah, it's a bad thing. I suspect, though, that whether something is a troll or not is largely in the eye of the beholder. Many Christians probably consider the "There is probably no God" bus stickers to be a highly offensive troll, but I don't think they're "bad" at all.
Because it helped identify something about the troll, namely it's one who has a problem with women. And it outed someone who seems to think that that's okay.
Dude, if I wanted to plea for victimhood, I've got a lot better cards to pull than the girl card.
Here is why I brought it up, and it had nothing to do with playing the victim:
The "men" who attack people like me and Kathy Sierra are intimidated and disgusted by the fact that it is useless, artsy fartsy, outsider women who are getting so much attention. And so their trolling is evident of this, because it is of a disgustingly sexual nature.
They think they are vastly superior to us, but they can't think of any better way to attack us than flooding programming IRC channels with speculations about the viscosity & odor of our sexual juices (me) or Photoshopping us being strangled by a pair of women's panties (Kathy Sierra).
Certainly those beta males don't seem to understand this, but that kind of trolling doesn't make them look powerful, it typifies their weakness and demonstrates that they are afraid of women and don't understand the nature of real power.
And saying I'm playing the girl card and pleaing to victimhood just because I mention the very relevant fact of my gender, on a forum that is almost entirely male... well, let me know the next time somebody claims you fucked an entire conference -- hey, cumdumpster, how's it feel? -- and that's why people read your blog.
Anyway, I don't in general agree with crying "sexism"[1], but sometimes the shoe fits.
And I don't think anybody is in my way, stopping me from being the best I want to be, blah blah blah. But they are still obnoxious, insecure little sexist fucks.
While Arrington is even more insufferable than Sierra, he is an expert in the mechanics of trolling. He knows what he's doing: he's judged that the hype-value of publicising his detractors outweighs the foolishness of feeding the trolls, and I think he's probably right.
He's not going to get taken hook, line, and sinker like Kathy Sierra did. She managed to prove her attackers correct (at least regarding her incompetence) in her reaction to them. That is the real lesson of the Kathy Sierra debacle, and why it is one of the most epic trolls of all time.