[Silur]

I think there are a number of factors that contribute to this and many of them have been touched upon already.

First, there is the personal level. It is much harder to build the same type of interpersonal relationships with people you do not meet in real life. There are too many things missing from the interaction - in fact, almost everything. In some cases it may result in something as bad as what Aqua-Chan describes. The apparent anonymity is also a factor of course, but over time I believe its effect to be quite small. After all, if you have a long term commitment to a message board and its members, you dont feel anonymous for long.

Second, you have no chance of reading the expressions on the other persons face, so you cannot adapt your responses accordingly - something we do continuously and automatically. Verbal communication, no matter how fluent, is still limited and needs to be mediated by ques from the receiving party to guarantee proper delivery. Not everyone is fluent in english, so there is also a language barrier.

Third, there's culture. Most of our understanding of our own culture is not conscious, but acts automatically on our behaviour. There are courses for people working with other cultures, where you learn to identify the specifics of your own culture first to even start to put them into relation with other cultures. Very few on this board have that type of training, so culture clashes are bound to happen. Even between western Europe and the US there are enough differences for this to happen. As an example, in most of western Europe the question of free abortion is not an issue whatsoever, while in the US this view can cause great offense in some circles.

Religion is really a part of culture, but it sets up such a complex communication barrier I mention it specifically. The number of offensive and immoral behaviours described by religion are difficult to fathom, and can cause irreparable damage to communication between people.

On the other hand, if a person on the net is a true friend, the friendship will survice a few hurt feelings along the way just like your RL friends do. And on the other hand, if a relatively unknown person hurts your feelings it's no real catastrophe is it? It's the same as in real life, where that jerk in the next lane cuts you off, or someone that doesnt wait in line like the rest of us, etc.