"I refuse to adopt the very type of behaviour that I detest."

...then don't be surprised when you eventually get chased offline by every punk who knows they can chuff you. No skin off my nose; I firmly believe that the Internet is vastly overpopulated as it is in many aspects.

But, notice that I never mentioned that you need to specifically use foul language or even angry words. Sometimes, all it takes is enough sarcasm to let them know you're twisting the proverbial knife... and it sinks in about five minutes after they read it.

"And there are many out there that are mentally unstable and if you push their buttons they could show up at your house and shoot you."

Sure - some yutz halfway across the planet is going to board an airplane (whilst smuggling a weapon to do so), or drive halfway across the country while smuggling said weaponry, go allllll the way out to your house, and "shoot you" over something said online?

You'd have better odds at winning Powerball w/ a $1bn jackpot on it.

Seriously.

I've received exactly one half-assed death threat in all the years I've spent online. Most of my time was in making grand entertainment out of finding self-important idiots and slowly torquing them into a foaming ball of rage. There was even a whole pack of us in alt.nuke.the.USA, and we'd give each other as much of a hard time as we gave the rest of the planet. IOW, I actively went out and sought trouble. I pushed people's buttons like I was GIR on methamphetimines in front of a control panel.

sigh...

Sadly, trolling online in such a manner is IMHO a lost art. "Trolling" nowadays has become an arena where punk kids play the obvious and think they're clever. Damn, sometimes I wish there was a minimum age for online activity... but enough of nostalgia.

That one and only threat? Happened in 1997. It was dispatched of in less than a week by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (he lived in Newfoundland of all places), with a long, slobbering apology to conclude the episode (in an email openly cc'd to his ISP sysop, his local clerk of court, and my ISP's sysop). I never heard from him again.

Trust me - most bullies make their very existence on the threat of "enraged user hell-bent on revenge shoots local netizen" . It's almost as popular as the threats to 'hack your computer', which has been bandied about since the dawn of time.

Tell you what - you cower in fear that someday you'll make someone even madder if you don't stand up for yourself, and I'll go on to happily beat the same creatures into literary pulp. Fair enough? ;)

/P

Message edited on: 01/14/2006 01:52