Exactly What About The Internet Makes People So Darn Nasty?

That's the question I'm debating today and as I've just Googled the subject in hand, it appears that it's a very common occurrence.  Further to my earlier post about being depressed, I truly believe that it's lifting now, but it has been a pretty awful few days.  I have made the decision to suspend my Facebook account for the foreseeable future and it's now my policy to only exchange emails with people I actually know in real life, I think that it's easier that way.

So, what makes people feel the need to write awful vitriolic forum posts or send horrible messages?  Speaking as somebody who would probably have engaged in a bit of keyboard sparring in the past I can kind of see how addictive it can be, but there are real people sitting there behind screens and it's not nice.  When I hear on the news or read in the papers or read about those teens who commit suicide because of cyber bullying my heart goes out to them and their stricken families.  Whilst growing up in suburban London during the 1980s I was subject to a fair amount of both physical and mental bullying and it's soul-destroying, literally, believe me.  Sometimes I wonder what's behind it all and what exactly to the bullies achieve in the long run?  Being a bit different and slightly (well, greatly) eccentric isn't a crime.

OK, so you want examples do you?  Fine, as it's anonymous then I'll share.  Right, picture the scene: a suburban girls secondary modern school in the fashion-conscious 1980s and it's non-uniform day and we've all paid the princely sum of 20p for the privilege of not wearing the navy blue and red hues of our daily grind.  So, I'm stuck - my clothes have never been the height of fashion at the best of times and this is one of the worst times of the year for me because I just can't keep up with the Tinas or the Donnas who rule the playground (I think we can tell that we're not talking about grammar school girls here, can't we?).  So what do I do?  I had a best friend at the time, let's call her Caroline for reasons of anonymity and we'd recently been shopping at the local mall and I'd purchased a Betty Boop nightshirt from M&S and she suggested that I may like to wear that, actually looking back I'm not sure if she was setting me up from the start and her report did state that she had and I quote: 'a bitchy streak'.  Anyway, I wore it and it didn't look unlike an oversized t-shirt which were fashionable at the time, it was grey, but slightly resembled the image below:

Somebody discovered that it was indeed a nightshirt and I received ribbing about it thoroughout the day until I removed it.  You see, I really should have begged my mother to purchase an expensive Naf Naf suit from her limited funds, which I believe retailed at a whopping £40 circa 1988.  They were the 'in thing' then and every Nicola, Shelley and Angie was sporting them then. 

Yes, horrible isn't it and this is one of the only images I could find online.  I seem to recall that many were acid shades of pink, purple and green and some even had a dice print, which made them even more clownesque in my opinion.  Nice.  Such a shame that I still live in this borough isn't it?  However I did reside elsewhere for a great number of years but family ties plus low property prices made me return.  Sigh.