BGs, emoticons - how is that for all these years people have been writing letters to each other and books and poems, and managing without these clever little innovations?

I don't mean we shouldn't feel free to use them as an additional communication technique. But suggesting we need them because of some special characteristic about the Internet - I can't see it.

In my 3D experience, it tends to be that the time when you need to point out that people should take what you say as not meaning what it sounds like, is when you you actually mean what you say literally, and feel it necessary to underline this. That sentence was meant slightly ironically...I think.

But this I mean absolutely literally: so long as someone isn't seen by you as an enemy, if they see you as an enemy, they are just aiming at some fantasy figure who isn't you at all, so, since they aren't using real bullets, there's no reason in the world to get upset about it.

And the same goes when they it looks as if they are attacking some friend. And in both cases, the chances are that they aren't actually attacking anyone, but have a different way of using language from you.