You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

In my many years online as part of this community or that, there is one truth that has made itself abundantly self-evident time and time again: The anonymity of the interweb has unleashed upon the virtual world roving, feral mobs of socially retarded vulgarians so vicious that their own mothers would reject them (if they actually went into the basement to see what the little bastards were up to). And their numbers are growing at an alarming rate.

Online communities are intended to be a place for like-minded denizens of the world wide web to congregate and discuss common interests in a reasonable and intelligent manner. As my Grandmother is fond of quoting, however, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". So what we really have created is an open and easily accessible venue for people to spew vitriol and verbal sewage at one another because they're safe behind the Internet Cloak of Invisibility (+1).

Allow me to present to you John Gabriel's "Greater Internet Dickwad Theory". It is that a normal person, in combination with anonymity and an audience, will turn into a complete and total dickwad.

I witness this "theory" in action on a daily basis. It happens in gaming forums, news forums, sporting forums...God as my witness I've even seen it happen on cooking forums!

There is no "watching it unfold". That implies progression. It can be so quick that some inexperienced readers may suffer whiplash. It starts off as a nice, fresh, clean thread with a basic premise (ie "It's sunny outside" or "Hugh Jackman is so hot I'd sell my first born to lick peanut butter off his abs"). Should but one lone voice utter a contrasting opinion, however, and the "discussion" rapidly degenerates into a flailing, flaming mass of memes, lolcats, insults and, eventually, "Internet Tough Guy" threats couched in language so foul that it would make Tony Soprano blush.

So why does it happen? Is it really is just as basic as "No one really knows who I am, so I'm going to barf out all the ugly stuff I keep in my head all day and that will make me feel 'leet'". Is it pasty basement dwellers who, through lack of contact with anything resembling reality, have developed the social skills of a bull moose in heat? Or is it a normal, rational human being suffering a momentary lack of self-control?

I don't really care. All I know is that the company that finally figures out how to deliver a punch to the face over TCP/IP will have my credit card number before their page view counter rolls over to "000002".