As a PT blogger, I've been both honored by the virtual company I keep and interested to read what opinions, ideas and knowledge those peers have to impart. Apparently not everyone is so appreciative of their online community. A recent controversial event, where Congressman Joe Wilson spoke out in the middle of President Obama's nationally-televised address, captivated the attention of an international political community and sparked a flurry of media debate about the implications of Wilson's outburst. The PT blogging community offered its own take on the matter, including an intriguing question by Satoshi Kanazawa, asking 
who could have captured such a high-quality image of the brief, spontaneous moment when Wilson accused the president of lying. The discussion continued as Linda Young offered an initial suggestion and an opportunity for readers to comment and share their insight on the matter in an attempt to discern how the photograph might have been taken.
Engaged as much by the question as I was by the zeal with which analysis pored into the aftermath of Wilson's actions, I devotedly followed the course of the ensuing conversation. While some comments were productive and, indeed, the mystery seems to have been solved, much of the chatter turned to derisive name-calling. In a follow-up post, Dr Young recapitulated the best and worst of the dialogue, including the observation that a well-intended online discourse quickly degraded into a heated exchange of base barbs, otherwise known as flaming.
Flaming is a phenomenon as old as the Internet. While that's not particularly ancient in terms of calendar years, the fact that the two began synchronously suggests something unique about cyber-communication: it facilitates extreme hostility. The tendency of online exchanges to disintegrate into personal attacks, dating back to the Usenet forums, has been so common that a law was glibly written to describe it. Godwin's law states that "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." We often portray the Internet as a harbinger of society's progress, so what factors does it possess that also breed uncouth, scurrilous behavior?
Aggression is a social behavior in that it involves more than one person. Although it is adaptive to an extent, and exists in all species in one form or another, it can become problematic in humans when it is excessive in intensity or duration. Several factors can lead to unnecessary aggression, and Web-based communication possesses a quintessential combination which shepherds rude behavior rarely observed in person. I'll go into a few of the factors here.
Through deindividuation, people are more likely to cross social boundaries. Posting messages online helps the user feel anonymous. For the same reason that riots occur most frequently at night when it's difficult to make out faces, there's less concern about the consequences of your actions. When disparaging someone online, there's little thought of actually encountering the other person. Although the two participants rarely meet in most online spats, in one incident in London, a man became so infuriated that he tracked down and murdered the man with whom he had been trading insults in a chat room.
Communicating online aids dehumanization. Dehumanizing a person is a potent recipe for aggressive behavior, as demonstrated in the landmark Stanford Prisoner Experiment by fellow PT blogger Philip Zimbardo. When speaking to someone in front of you, subtle social cues are observed which moderate the tone you take and what you choose to say. A blush signals embarrassment and turning the head downward is a sign of submissiveness, and these evolved social mechanisms inform an interlocutor that they've gone far enough. In the absence of such ‘human' cues, it becomes easier to be rude.
From the comfort of our computer chairs, people often feel an exaggerated sense of self, a form of self-aggrandizement. For example, in Second Life, a 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and customize their own character, the average height of males in the virtual world is a bit over 6' tall, whereas the actual average male height is closer to 5'10." We tend to feel a little bigger, a little more confident, and we find our own opinions a little more fraught with significance online. As a result, we're more likely not only to vocalize our views, but to do so with bravado.
Communicating online can be frustrating because of the difficulty of expressing emotion. When frustrated, people tend to be more aggressive. In a social psychology experiment a confederate cut in front of people while they waited in a long line. The longer people had been in line, presumably inching up their frustration, the more irritation they expressed at the confederate who tried to slip in front of them. In person you can emphasize a point with a hand gesture or a facial expression, and even over the phone you can raise your voice or make a dramatic pause, but online these traditional means of drawing attention to our point fall flat. When trying to express an opinion, but lacking the resources to effectively get the point across, an exasperated person may be more likely to curse, make wild comparisons or use offensive phrases.
Lastly, with the speed of exchange online, you can type a hostile message and impulsively post it before thinking your actions through. These provoking displays are often difficult to undo. An individual responds to a provocation with an aggressive message of equal or greater insult than the one that offended her. The situation quickly escalates, and before you know it, Godwin's law has been proven correct again. The ultimate, unequivocal insult is a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis. This is the end that some commenters were approaching before Dr. Young removed her original post.
Despite a host of psychological explanations, it still seems difficult to grasp how Internet exchanges can turn so ugly. As a polite person who would never consider skewering someone with slurs, especially someone you've never met, you may still wonder how anyone could possibly be so cruel and heartless. To better understand, imagine a situation where, winding around a curve as you drive home at night, you notice a cat jaunting across the road. Most of us slow and correct our course so as to avoid causing the cat harm. However, you may know someone who speeds up and steers directly towards the slinking feline. To the flamer, an online post that spurs his ire is a target, frozen with wide doe-eyes, waiting to be maimed.
I'd never suggest that to them in person, though.
To read more, see this article on flaming.
