I'd say it's more of an IRC thing. IRC has always had a less than professional culture of communication and this is just regular behaviour on an open IRC networ

I'd say it's more of an IRC thing. IRC has always had a less than professional culture of communication and this is just regular behaviour on an open IRC network. Personally I think that, on one hand, the more relaxed standards make communication more direct, but on the other hand, there's definitely a tendency to escalate disputes and pile on if someone disagrees with a regular in a channel.