It's an old problem. There's a neat book, Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, published by the EFF back in 1990. There's a quote from it[1] that comes to mind wh

It's an old problem. There's a neat book, Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, published by the EFF back in 1990. There's a quote from it[1] that comes to mind when I see people vehemently disagreeing online: Something about online communications seems to make some people particularly irritable. Perhaps it's the immediacy and semi-anonymity of it all. Whatever it is, there are whole classes of people you will soon think seem to exist to make you miserable. Rather than pausing and reflecting on a message as one might do with a letter received on paper, it's just so easy to hit your R key and tell somebody you don't really know what you really think of them. Even otherwise calm people sometimes find themselves turning into raving madmen. When this happens, flames erupt. And of course, Usenet was around long before this book was published. So now, when I see people being righteously indignant on HN or Reddit, I try to take it in stride. They're just carrying on the time honored internet flaming tradition. :) [1] https://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/bdgtti/bdgtti_8.html https://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/bdgtti/bdgtti_8.html