The Scoreboard - Final Tally

Having worn out their welcome at prominent message boards and other sites, members of the "idiot free zone" moved onto Usenet news groups which, for the most part, is unmoderated. One can google the leader's name and still read about the sordid mess created on that venue.

In case you missed it the first time around:

"Usenet is a worldwide network of newsgroups (also called forums or message boards) covering an estimated 40,000 (and growing) different topics. Users can post anything they care to, and often do so anonymously.

The sexually explicit content on Usenet newsgroups is often more extreme than that on adult-oriented Web sites.Moreover, sexually explicit Usenet newsgroups are conduits for advertising adult-oriented Web sites and can provide their users with a mechanism to swap sexually explicit material. Some Internet service providers carry a full line of Usenet newsgroups."

http://tinyurl.com/phfh4

I do not know what insatiable appetite prompts individuals to invade forums and browbeat in perpetuity. That type of ruffian behavior certainly isn’t related to anything intellectual or informative. I suspect the conduct is in direct proportion to a critically deficient level of maturity. In fact, most articles addressing "cyberbullies" are geared toward the adolescent population.

From a NYTimes article:

"The technology, which allows its users to inflict pain without being forced to see its effect, also seems to incite a deeper level of meanness. Psychologists say the distance between bully and victim on the Internet is leading to an unprecedented - and often unintentional - degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescent's lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skills."

We have now seen this dynamic show up in adult interaction as well. The only difference I can determine is that teenagers tend to contain their bullying tactics among their peers. Somehow I don’t see them combing genealogy sites, posting bounties, rifling through tax documents, criminal records, or threatening to divulge detrimental information about their victim’s relatives.

Those who have been on the receiving end of this type of intimidation may have survived the earthquake, but the aftershocks are exhausting.