“Someone with the need for self-abasement feels that they should be perpetually punished for their wrongdoings. They’re like the albino that whipped himself in The Da Vinci Code, only instead of drawing blood they draw “**** you noobtard” comments. It’s either a subconscious way to feel like they’re paying back the world for their sins, or they’re just so out of self-esteem that they can’t muster the energy to defend themselves.

If taken to an extreme, it can even turn into Online Erotic Humiliation where the abuse turns into sexual arousal. So the next time you tell someone to go **** themselves, you might have just given them the material to do so.

But maybe more common than that is good ol’ Attention Seeking Behavior, which every single person who’s ever spent just one evening with a child will be familiar with. The outcast, like the child, knows that hate is not the opposite of love, apathy is. All that negative attention is still attention, and the abuse is still several steps better than being ignored.

So we’ve established that when you say, in person, “Jimmy, go away, you’re a retard” that Jimmy is just happy that somebody used his name and acknowledged his existence. Even if the only reason you used his name was to tell him to go die in a fire.

But when you type it on a message board, it’s that much better. This isn’t just attention, but attention that’s being broadcast around the globe via the World Wide Web. The “we hate Jimmy” thread on a popular forum might be read by thousands of people. If that many people are reading about him, he must matter (hell, think of all the TV personalities who have made a career out of being hated).

The attention-seeker gets what he wants, and the self-abaser gets an erection big enough to actually interfere with the signal on his wireless keyboard.”