"There is something about the Web that brings out the ego monster in everybody."

Michael Kinsley writes about the blatant self-absorption on display thanks to the internet in an op-ed in today's Washington Post:

There is something about the Web that brings out the ego monster in everybody. It's not just the well-established tendency to be nasty. When you write for the Web, you open yourself up to breathtakingly vicious vitriol. People wish things on your mother, simply for bearing you, that you wouldn't wish on Hitler.

It's true! Facebook and MySpace are forums to talk about yourself in socially accepted, and even encouraged, ways. And blogs, oh my.

I haven't heard about people wishing things on my mother, but I have received some "hate" emails. Any public person will encounter people with whom they disagree, and I try to deal with them and move on.