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Words are only as powerful as you personally let them be to your life.  Something is only offensive if you allow yourself to be offended.

 As long as people continue to take the expressions of some meaningless faceless individual on the internet as personal affronts to your very being as an individual, things will never change.

 I used to be one of the most "famous" online identities in relation to a computer game community. The community of the games main rival collectively trolled and abused me online for many months.  I just ignored them (and occasionally had an incredibly fun time poking them to intensify their rage).  None of the personal attacks, death threats, comments to my manhood, redicule of my work had any effect on me at all. I found it all quite funny.  Why? because I DID NOT let it effect me.

Control of your own emotions and reactions is the most powerful tool you will ever give yourself in your life.

 

If you've ever actually been stalked in real life, however, I guarantee the experience does not leave you, and death threats online can be extremely intimidating.

People so casually leave word bombs, and dismiss their targets as overly thin-skinned, but they have no idea what those people may have experienced.

Having said that, I have seen an awful lot of people in these forums and others get in a huff over "personal attacks" that were nothing more than an expression of disagreement. But we're not talking about these folks.

A young woman living alone who has already moved to a new city and changed her job and possibly her name to avoid a stalker with a history of violence against her who has been observed with weapon in hand and has a restraining order against him is likely going to react differently to threats of violence from people who may or may not be strangers than a full grown adult male who hasn't been in a serious physical confrontation since 4th grade.

No amount of will power is going to change these fundamental reactions. Fear is basic.

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.