In 90s America (and perhaps elsewhere as well), "I'll kill you for that!" was a fairly common expression of mild displeasure, obvious hyperbole neither intended

In 90s America (and perhaps elsewhere as well), "I'll kill you for that!" was a fairly common expression of mild displeasure, obvious hyperbole neither intended nor received as an earnest threat. In "IRL" this changed sometime between Columbine and 9/11 when people got super serious about such things, but I think that culture persisted online for several more years. Online was in some sense unreal, so hyperbolic death threats were obviously hyperbolic and were received as such. But as online has become "real life" for more and more people, hyperbolic death threats have been de-normalized online as well. Now it's mostly relegated to out of the way niches, like gamer chatrooms, but echoes of it still reverberate around the web anywhere people can comment anonymously.