Dealing with Terrorists.

When someone or some community posts enough threats to be taken seriously and make an organization cancel an event, it’s terrorism, plain and simple. The organization is scared of what might happen if the threats are carried out.

That said, is an organization like SxSW prepared to handle the threat of terrorism? Is it possible that the GamerGate community is crazy enough (or it has rogue members who are psychopathic enough) to do harm to a large number of people?

After all, we live in a time where acts like an individual walking into a movie theatre and shooting it up has become commonplace. Maybe thinking about the safety of the thousands of attendees at the conference isn’t as unfortunately a decision made in the wrong direction as we think? Maybe SxSW’s management team was smartly prudent?

I’m not protecting the actions of terrorists. I’m asking are we prepared to face them as a community as we think we are? There’s a fine line between courage and stupidity.