I'm with GUEST, catter up there.

There are ratbags in every forum, every community, office, family... everywhere. Some attempt to piss everyone off with such dedication that it seems desperate. We have these here. My guess is that they can succeed in little else, interpersonally, and at least they get noticed when they act like assholes. The desperation, however, is just too blatant for me to take them seriously.

Other folks, who come down to some nasty level to play, bother me more. I guess it's just that the threatening, rude, easily goaded, egotistical, whatever, plonker, was always lurking behind the public 'face'. Those qualities lurk behind most of our masks, in varying degrees. What I can't figure out is what makes people, who obviously CAN be nice, decide they can justify (to themselves) letting their 'inner asshole' come out and hurt people. I suppose what bothers me more than them just showing who they really are is the realisation that I'd misjudged them.