[WS:] I am not sure about this intimate space argument. I certainly have not observed it. My explanation of internet asshole-ness incidentally falls close to Graeber's argument about stripping people of their social connections, which he argues is the foundation of slavery and capitalism. Internet does precisely this - it strips people of all their social connections and relations, reducing people to soundbites on the computer screen. "On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog" http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html or for that matter who you are. A person is becoming a text that can be "deconstructed" at will, a punching bag devoid of human qualities and feelings.
Stated differently, our empathy with fellow human beings is based on mirror neurons which in turn require physical presence of another person. If that physical presence is not present, empathy does not work anymore.
The internet is a replication, of a sort, of Milgram's obedience experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment . The experiment yielded the results it did, because the "teacher" and "learner" had been physically separated to different rooms. Had they instead faced each other in the same room, however, I sincerely doubt that many "teachers" would have been willing to administer "lethal" shocks to the "learner" they faced.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."