Dopp Juice Archive

Kathy Sierra, one of the keynote speakers at SXSWi this year, is hiding in her home with the doors locked right now, cancelling events and fearing for her life. She’s been receiving rape and death threats from anonymous trolls in the blogosphere.

She writes…

‘Do not put these people on a pedestal. Do not let them get away with calling this “social commentary”, “protected speech”, or simply “criticism”. I would never be for censoring speech–these people can say all the misogynistic, vile, tasteless things they like–but we must preserve that line where words and images become threats of violence. Freedom of speech–however distasteful and rude the speech may be, is crucial. But when those words contain threats of harm or death, they can destroy a life.’

Read her post and pass it on. As danah boyd points out, we need to stand up in social solidarity. This is our community. We have a responsibility to protect our space and send a message: this kind of behavior is NOT okay.

“i donÂ’t have a hipster pda. the hipster rule of law requires that one must never declare oneself a hipster. paraleptical, yes. but i donÂ’t have a hipster pda; i have a bunch of 3 by 5Â’s held together with a clip.” –Alicia Dattner, Getting Shit Done: Productivity for Unprofessionals

Okay, so I don’t have a Hipster PDA (hPDA), either. I have an ultra-techie 1-year-out-of-date Palm OS Treo 650 phone. But that doesn’t make me any less fascinated with how people more creative than myself are organizing their lives with flare and attitude.The Hipster PDA is truly a beautiful thing. Merlin Mann (one of my heroes) popularized a cool renovation on David Allen’s Getting Things Done system which involves a handful of notecards, a paperclip, and your back pocket. Whoever said “getting effectively organized costs lots of money” has obviously never been introduced to this little miracle.I thought it stopped there. We all did. But oh, how wrong we were. I don’t think any of us saw the Hipster Shuffle coming…The formula is simple (in the true spirit of Hipster PDA culture): replace the paperclip with a new iPod shuffle, and dance all night long to the rhythm of true synthesized style and organization. The blog post that introduces the idea, and its corresponding youtube video, are absolutely hillarious.

Some people do work because they need money. Some people do work because they want to grow in a certain direction. And some people do work because it’s who they are. Meet Jenka. She is Identity. And in this culture, there’s a market for identity — a big one. She does work because it’s who she is. And she just recently started writing about it at social.creature. Check it out. She kicks it off by telling us how and why she became identity.

being a former russian immigrant, turned american resident, living in israel, and speaking russian, english, and hebrew fluently would consistently disorient people’s understanding of what my “identity” was and how they were supposed to be treating me. … this experience in israel is, in retrospect, where my understanding of identity comes from: just how mutable it really is, how much of it is a constructed performance, how important a role context plays in that performance, and how the process of choosing who to be is just that. … making a message that has to fit in, has to rebel, has to speak to the VIPs, to the underdogs, to the clever ones playing all sides, and is keepin’ it real the whole time is a practice i’ve been working on my whole life.

First of all, I love how she’s transformed being an other into being valuable. May we all sit up straight and learn this lesson. Second, she’s right. We choose who we are. Sometimes we just need a little help from someone who knows what she’s doing.