In the web, every subject is potentially incendiary. And there are as many places in which one can engage in flame wars as there are blond people in Scandinavia. Find a popular website, any site really, with an active comment section, and chances are you’re going to find people arguing about, oh, everything.
There are, however, some extra special places in which members fight, nay, verbally abuse each other over the most ridiculous things. Two places immediately come to mind: IMDB forums and Youtube comment sections. These forums are veritable cesspools of humanity, where members declare war on common decency, grammar and modern civilization. Vicious name-calling and unprovoked attacks abound. Hiding behind usernames, people say things they would never deign to say out loud, at least, not without heavily-armed security detail.
In real life, what people say may be constrained by social norms, by upbringing, by the law. But when hiding behind the cloak of virtual anonymity, people don’t seem to know where to draw the line, or they don’t seem to care to do so.
Complete anonymity in the internet is an illusion, of course. There are ways, such as IP address logging, to determine the identity of a person who leaves a comment. While the perceived anonymity is only an illusion, it’s still somehow treated as license to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how insulting or degrading.
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