I have no opinion one way or another on why the guy left, seemed over the top to be honest.

kleinbl00 I did find your article very interesting though and I seem to remember either reading it or something similar you posted way way back. One thing that strikes me is that, by your own explanation, you have an online persona that communicates with other online personas in a completely different manner to your offline life. I say personas rather than persons because from your perspective, you don't know the other person, you only know what they have written and you speak (discuss, argue, educate, annihilate) directly to that rather than the person behind it. I would guess this comes about from being a very active member of several online communities for a long period of time. You have an evolved sense of online self which I would guess is not the case with many of those you interact with.

From my own perspective this is not how I or indeed many others view their "online persona". For some our online personas are simply an extension of our offline personalities, We try to communicate online exactly as we do in real life.

For some others they have an even less sophisticated online self which, due to the de-inhibiting nature of anonymity results in them becoming assholes.

If I had to guess why people tend to take your comments to heart its down to them falling into either of the 2 groups I mentioned above. They view your tirades as either a direct attack on them as a person, or they view it as a direct attack on their online asshole and react accordingly. This results in hurt feelings, sore asses and emotional explosions all wrapped up in a text box of impotent post rage.

Its not for me to say whether your tactic is right or wrong because I have never encountered any context where applying that mechanism of aggression-as-time-saver would be a realistic option. I do admire the efficiency of it all though and the time you invested in it.

Switching topic, this whole 'hubski is kleins and not your thing' is BS. I read a lot of stuff on hubski, I rarely post because honestly I don't have the fucking time :(. Right now hubski is a collection of people who interact on a pretty personal level, I have a sense of each of the more active persons on the site and what their interests are. Compare that to other sites where its a shotgun blast of unknown, unknowable strangers commenting and then disappearing forever into a void... klein is one of the reasons I visit this site but if he left I would still be here. The same can be said for many others regardless of their follower count which matters little IMO.