The internet encourages many adults to act like children, writes Karyn Scherer, Herald deputy business editor.
So Paul Henry is about to return to the airwaves. I bet the letter-writers can't wait.
We in the media know them well. They used to begin their missives with "Dear Sir" or maybe "Dear Madam". These days, they're more likely to skip straight to the expletives.
What is it
about the digital age that encourages grown-ups to be so childish?
No, I don't mean Paul Henry. But if you're still enjoying his absence from breakfast television, then you were probably in agreement with the letter-writer whose dubious prose he quoted so eloquently at the Qantas Media Awards last year.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then look it up on YouTube, but be warned - it includes the "C" word.
I had assumed the letter was a piece of Ricky Gervais-style satire, but I'm now starting to wonder, after receiving my very own hatemail this week from a slightly unhinged banker.
The email address was from the Australian branch of Lloyds International and it referred to an article I recently wrote that noted that the British-owned bank has struck a bit of trouble Downunder.
Lloyds, you may recall, had to be bailed out by British taxpayers to the tune of billions of pounds at the height of the global financial crisis. Among the toxic assets it continues to own are branches in New Zealand and Australia which between them managed to lose more than $1 billion last year.
The banker didn't seem to appreciate my pointing this out (the punctuation and grammar are the author's own): "You are a stupid kiwi who doesn't know anything, how about you go crawl under a building in cristchurch you stupid kiwi, you should watch what you say and I suggest you get your facts straight you stupid ignorant person."
There was more: "Please get your facts right before you print this utter s**t and the loan book is not that bad and you shoud die you piece of sh*t, you should not be enjoying my oxygen. I am a god and a master of universe!!!!! You will submit to my strength and power!!!!"
It was signed off: "Regards, A proud lloyds employee who does not care about NZ. and stupid property they have killed us!!!!"
Clearly, he or she (something tells me the former is more likely than the latter) has been reading far too much Tom Wolfe. And I guess they are a bit stressed, which will no doubt be reassuring to the hundreds of thousands of Brits who marched through the streets of London last week to protest at cuts to government spending brought on, in part, by the massive bailouts for banks such as Lloyds.
The internet does seem to bring out the worst in some people.
It may be helping to defeat despots, but it also means we are now able to insult each other with unprecedented ease and speed, and I must admit I'm starting to wonder if one of its side-effects is not an increase in empathy, but its exact opposite.
On the other hand, anonymity isn't always a factor. If you were one of those people who hurled abuse at poorly paid Whitcoulls staff when you tried to cash in your book vouchers recently, then shame on you.
As Kiwis, we do have a tendency to confront the messenger, rather than the message. As my Australian correspondent demonstrated, it's hardly a unique cultural flaw, but annoying nevertheless.
Maybe it's simply a symptom of our society's increasing emphasis on individualism that we are forced to face these volcanic eruptions from people who lack other ways to vent their frustrations with modern life.
And maybe the media is indeed part of the problem. Goodness knows we are constantly exhorting people to tell us what they think.
As a journalist, I long ago learned the lesson that if you dish it out, you've got to be prepared to take it. But I like to think I've never dished out anything like the raw sewage that passes for comment in some arenas of public discourse these days.
Politicians, of course, have been putting up with this sort of crap since long before the printing press was even invented. Some are pretty good at dishing it out, too.
At least aspiring MPs know exactly what they are letting themselves in for, although you have to wonder if Darren Hughes really did appreciate this fact as much as he claimed.
It is one of the privileges of being a journalist that you sometimes get to publicise the plight of the powerless, and goad those who don't use their powers appropriately. And I'm all for having a laugh, lest we drown in a flood of tears.
But there are some days when I do wonder whether a thick skin is necessarily a good thing to develop. Surely it wouldn't hurt to take a glimpse in the mirror occasionally, and ask ourselves how we ever got to be this ugly?
