I get a lot of feedback to my articles and website via email. Around 98% of it is so friendly and pleasant that I post it on my site, but in that other 2% there are some real doozies.

Email and newsgroups have qualities that seem to invite unusual behavior. Again, these are very rare occurrences, but when they happen they exhibit very clear patterns:

For some men, the anonymity of email and newsgroups seems to provide a rare ability to express strong emotions without the filters normally (and quite rightly) imposed by society.

For some women, email is an easy way to pose as morally superior without the nuisance of actually ~being~ morally superior.

EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE MEN

(No, girls, that's not redundant. Let's not be catty.)

Sorry fellas, but it would be reverse-sexist of me to pretend that I get this kind of email from women:

Dear Ms Cox,

You said that people who don't like spam have small brains. Well, I HATE spam and I have an extra large brain, so you are stupid and everything you say is stupid, and you are stupid, and anyone who thinks you are not stupid is stupid.

You're welcome,

Mike S. Angry Young Man

Wow! I guess someone wasn't breastfed.

If anyone actually walked up to me and spoke that way in person, they'd walk away with a wake-up dose of pepper spray sluicing through their freshly violated colon.

Obviously, "Mike S." possesses the kind of brainpower that makes one-card monty dealers rejoice in their career choice, but is that an excuse for such a self-indulgent attack? What is?

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." --H.L. Mencken

Sweet Jesus!! That's the NORMAL ones?!? Thank God there are so few. (Oops, catty.)

I suppose that all men have a demon of rage crouching deep within, tightly coiled, set to spring at the least provocation like a runner off the blocks--some murky throwback to the cave days when survival might depend on a split-second transition from sound sleep to ferocious bloodlust; a mood swing on steroids.

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." --Samuel Johnson

Ahhh. I always thought that kinda pinched look meant men were grappling with the Big Thoughts (or that they were a little backed up). Now I know that it's the Pain of Being a Man.

Strangely, I'm not sure that most men are aware of "the Pain of Being a Man" themselves. I asked every guy I know about this secret man-pain thing and they all looked at me like I was pulling their, uh... legs.

WOMEN GET "BOTHERED"

"Bothered?" I hear you asking. "What the hell does that mean?"

Dunno. I mean, I know what bothered means. It's that gnawing little feeling of contempt we get when other people don't have the sense to be more like us.

What I don't know is why the botherEE would naturally assume that her botheredNESS was of the teensiest modicum of interest to the botherER.

The opening phrase "It bothers me that..." smacks of a woman freshly empowered by her personal assertiveness coach, stamping her little foot down on any and every subject which arouses her miff... price of bananas, the holocaust, video rewind charges, etc.

Dear Ms Cox,

It bothers me that you compare the price of bananas with the holocaust in which six million yaddas were yadda yadda'd and yadda yadda yadda.

Yadda,

Barbara J. Moral Compass At Large

Bothered schmothered. Incensed, irate, fuming, outraged... those are the emotions that get things done. Bothered is a scrawny little turd of a response, notable mainly for its prissy self-importance.

Bothered isn't a strong enough emotion to fuel much of an effort, so about the only place you'll see it is on call-in radio shows, at PTA meetings and in hastily dispatched email.

In the above case, for instance, Barbara might have enough passion to dash off a "bothered" email, but I doubt you'll find her tirelessly stalking geriatric Nazis throughout darkest Argentina armed with a car battery wired to a set of nipple clips.

Though I doubt her husband gets off so easily.

IN SUMMARY

I live in an idyllic part of America where polite motorists still honk and give each other the finger rather than the less cordial hail of gunfire.

On the information superhighway, however, the only regional barriers are language-based, so it's not so easy to remain insulated from the baser natures of our fellow travelers.

Or our own! I'm sure we've all been known to pop off a few rounds at our fellow netizens now and then.

Hell, it's half the fun!