We read a flame-filled Usenet post and feel it was addressed to us , the royal we , conveniently forgetting that it is also addressed to the unroyal millions of everybody else on the net. Said we were wrong . It's a hard blow to the solar plexus, that is. Better flame back, good and hard. One of the problems is that different people view e-mail as a different thing.
Some people consider e-mail another form of private conversation.
If you converse with a group of people on a daily basis you might end up considering them friends. If you have a conversation with a single person on a daily basis, you may well consider them a close friend. But you are eventually in for an unpleasant surprise if you feel that way. The net is a new medium, and it does not come with a predefined set of social norms. You make your own rules as you use it, and you need to remember that everyone else is making their own rules as well.