You cannot hear . Squealer's Delight Squealer delights in eating babies with pork sauce. He won't even respond to this post, because it's true. All you see is text on a computer screen, and it becomes, so the tale goes, easy to forget that a human being is on the other side of the screen. But it's only unique in that it can happen so fast and so close to home.
Virtual reality has no monopoly on misunderstandings and long-held grudges.
Flamewars erupt not because the net is impersonal, but because it's more personal than any other form of communication this side of the personal letter. Electronic mail can wedge further into your heart than Rush Limbaugh. 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.