Or why do people feel free to be mean just because they don't have to sign their own name to a comment?
I took a web studies class in grad school, and we talked about this all the time. There are so many things said online that we would never say face to face but because we have a level of detachment (the computer) separating us...some how this lessens our thoughts concerning the consequences of our dialogue. We went off on tangents a lot about how our whole society is finding new ways all the time of detachment...email, text message...
Maybe if we had more face to face conversations, we'd all be a little peachier online.
I bet psych departments are writing whole papers on this kind of stuff...
The only reason I can think of so far for stealing fanfic is a little fame or glory in a comments section...which is sad that you need to steal it, but ok, it's a *little* geeky cool that someone thinks fanfic is worth all that trouble...If that makes any sense.
Cheerio
JD
