towards a sociology of the web

I agree with the following just-arrived analysis as well, and have been especially surprised at how lesser-known people think they are entitled to vile web behavior against the better-known:

“What’s amazing about these things is the way that the same syndrome keeps repeating itself on the web, with different people performing the same roles. The weasels are always liable to cry ‘fascism’ if you close comments boxes… There’s an inbuilt slave mentality with these people; somehow their swagger of superiority always goes alongside a resentful sense that they don’t have the same level of power as others who have a stronger voice and a clearer project (as if that stronger voice or bigger profile was somehow a gift from the gods rather than a consequence of courageously doing what they are too scared to do, and state a position, maintain it, think through its implications, and adjust it)… in their own minds, their ‘lesser’ position supposedly legitimates their invective: they are heroic little Davids casting slingshots at oppressive Goliaths, bringing down to earth those who have ‘got too big for their boots’… “