"If you can't "take it", then you should stay away from certain types of online environments." I tend to agree with that to some extent. There are always going to be places that you just shouldn't go into unless you carry brass knuckles and know how to use them. At the same time, there should be a some expectation that most places will be reasonably safe and civil most of the time, otherwise you have anarchy. As Acadia says, the web's sense of anonymity leads to a lot of abuse that in the "real world" is discouraged by the prospect of a punch in the snoot. As more and more of life moves online, we really need to find some way of trying to have a reasonable level of civility in cyberspace.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken