Classroom Bullies On The Interne
peter303 writes "Oldtimers are familiar with sociopaths in usenet newsgroups and chat rooms. The NY Times has an article about grade school kids who bully on the Internet. These include message bombing and slanderous web pages. The web allows one to extend bad manners from real life."

Comment that I thought was worth noting.

by TheRealFixer (552803) <jmv1.cyberspace@org> on Thursday August 26, @01:00PM (#10079860) I play a little bit of Star Wars: Galaxies, and it's facinating to watch the online bully mentality, and how it develeops. On our server, there's an entire guild who prides themselves on ruining everyone elses fun. They are the self-declared alpha-bullies of the game. Recently, someone (either a disgruntled former "insider" or a victim who had had enough of the harassment... no one knows for sure) got ahold of account logins and passwords of several of their members and started deleting their characters. It's now escalated into full-blown harassment, posting personal information (including SS#s) in live chat, and threats of violence in real life. All over a series of tables and fields in a database somewhere.

Some say that online life is a mask people can wear to be someone else. I'm more inclined to believe it's a magnifying glass which can amplify the worst qualities in someone.

From slashdot.org http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/26/1536246 relating to a NYTimes article http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/education/26bully.html?ex=1251172800&en=75fcc217518a0daf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland