I have always said that people get brave behind the keyboard, and usually when confronted or their is a face to face their is a different tone to the conversation. I have seen a lot of blow hards in the past 10 years. I will tell you Fidonet or more commonly as it was called Fight-o-net was the pre-net community where I learned first hand how brutal people could be, from behind the keyboard.
Some of those conversations extended beyond the keyboard, and I remember actually having to file a police report on a individual when he started calling my home. This was before police even knew about the online world, but the threats and attacks had crossed the line, resulting in this individual verbalizing their hate and discontent to my wife.
In many places on the web today that behavior is alive and well, and in all sincerity I just avoid those areas of the net wasteland. Flame wars are definitely not fun, nor productive. So what happens when a person writes something that is a outright lie online. Well as one person found out the cyber sleuths have gotten pretty good at tracking people down. [seattletimes.nwsource.com]