This article really touches on something that's been a particular concern of mine ever since I logged onto my first computer BBS back in the early nineties, which is how some people believe it to be acceptable to treat people with less respect online than they would in real life. I can't say that I received the kind of graphic threats that Kathy Sierra did, but I've certainly received more than my fair share of harassment online, particularly in the pre-.org days, and to this day I still encounter people online who seem to derive some sort of sick pleasure from insulting me and making idle threats towards me.

I can't begin to talk about how much I hate how these people have developed all these smart-ass rejoinders whenever anyone calls them out on their bad behaviour, like "lol Internet" or "the Internet is Serious Business." I don't understand where these people get the impression that the fact that they're on the Internet somehow excuses their actions. It's as if these phrases are a shorthand for saying "I'm pissed off because I can't treat people like crap like I did when I was 12 years old without getting fired or jailed or punched in the face, so instead of developing healthier ways to channel my emotions I'm just going to dump on people on the Internet I don't like."

The worst part about this phenomenon is that having observed it for over ten years now, I've noticed that for many of the people who choose to engage in it, it isn't just some phase they go through where they first delight in being able to dump on people without any real repercussions and then get bored with it after a few months or years. I'm now seeing people well into their thirties who are still acting this juvenile, and after this long you begin to wonder if they're just going to act like this all their lives. I know the big joke about the Internet is that anyone can come on here and be a hot seventeen-year-old girl, but I think the more pressing problem is how many adults -- who damn well know better -- are coming on here and being petulant fifth-grade bullies.

As much as I wish that Sierra never had to go through what she went through, I hope that this incident opens up a wider discussion on this phenomenon of people mistreating and abusing other people online. I've been saying for a while, though, that I don't think there's going to be a real serious discussion on this topic until one of these misanthropes just pisses off the wrong person, and the victim travels some 3,000 miles to take care of the problem with a gun or something like that. I really don't want that to happen, but as long as we don't discuss all this "lol Internet" crap and passively accept this kind of bad behaviour, the chance of such a tragedy happening will continue to exist.