IM: AFK2BYHD (away from keyboard 2 burn ur hous down)

Taking 'Flamewar' A Bit Too Seriously: Man Drives 1,300 Miles To Burn Down Home Of Online Critic

by Mike Masnick
Fri, Jul 27th 2007 7:31pm

from the yeah,-maybe-let-that-one-go dept

Online flamewars certainly can get nasty at times, often boiling over into quite a bit of rage -- but it's still pretty rare (and amazing) to see that anger then boil over into the real world. Last year, we wrote about a case in the UK where someone drove 70 miles to attack the guy he was sparring with online. The press referred to it as "web rage," though, rage doesn't tend to last that long. Or, perhaps it does. Here in the US we do things in bigger ways, apparently. A guy in Virginia who got into a flamewar online decided to make it a bit more literal, and drove 1,300 miles to Waco, Texas to burn down the home of one of this online enemies from a (no, this isn't a joke) picture sharing community.

(more at Techdirt...)

I hope this puts to rest the theory that the internet is only serving to isolate and distance people. Obviously, it's also bringing people together in surprising new ways.