"to grant them full being in the world"
Sure... But do you take offence to everything that anyone on the street might say?!?! What about what people you see on the news, half a world away? This is the bit that boggles my mind.... Why oh why give ANYONE the power to wound you with their words?!?! When you can very easily protect oneself, and save ones REAL interaction for people who prove they are worth it?!?!   I think I mentioned elsewhere, I ONLY give people I know and love that power over me... Cause I know they aren't going to use it, unless I really need it....

"why should the burden be thrown on people whose only error was to take you seriously"
Because very person is responsible for their OWN emotions... No one can MAKE you feel anything unless you chose to allow them to make you feel something... It's a choice... a responsibility...

" treat people as ciphers on your screen -- your fatuous "this is cyberspace, not real space" argument"
Well, I for one don't believe it's fatuous in the least... I'll wager that 99.999% of people online are doing some kind of role-playing with their interactions... And given how ephemeral the connection is, one MUST assume that things are NOT what they appear to be in cyberspace, until you learn differently.

Lemme put it this way.... What does it matter what some "nick-name" says about your "Nickname" on some backwater message board, in the vast wash of cyberspace?!?!    I guess THAT is what I well and truly do not understand... And I'm not asking to be facetious or argumentative in the least.... I am honestly curious how and why people would let this sort of thing get under their skin at all.... I mean, it's not like, for example, Martin Gibson is real... It was a nick-name, thinly painted over a balloon here in cyberspace...

And even if there was any substance behind the veneer, how does it really matter? Is Mudcat, and what anyone says on it really capable of affecting your life in such a drastic manner? Why?

I guess my big question is, why, how can people take this place (And by inference ANY internet messageboard) so seriously?? That might be what I don't understand. Mudcat is NOT the people you've met in real life though it may have facilitated the initial contact. It's nothing more than, as William Gibson put it, a consensual hallucination... a fabricated reality. If it went away, people who met here who wanted to stay in touch with each other would still keep in touch.

That's way more real than this place, isn't it? Or is it just me that sees it that way?