Boffins ponder why online folk are phlegm crazy

THE GRAUNIAD has a piece investigating why people send crazy phlegms and nasty online messages to each other, when they wouldn't do that ordinarily.

The article, which you can find here, lines up a whole bafflement of boffins to explain things such as lack of emotional intelligence and the like.

Even people who know each other are more abusive online than they are offline. And people phlegm each other because of "online disinhibition" according to internet psychology lecturer Dr Chris Fullwood.

But we'd suggest there's a couple of very simple reasons why people behave like unrestrained oiks online while they're probably mild mannered inhibited geeks offline.

One reason is they've drunk too much beer and will deeply regret what they've said when they wake up with a terrible hangover the next day.

And the other is that if they said the things online to people they meet in the street, they'd probably get bopped on the nose or arrested. µ