Why are people on forums so rude?

[Katria]

Well basically, on any forum I go to...these people are always so rude and strict. They always act like smart asses and have sooo much rules.
Especially utaforum.net. I use that quite a lot, but the people on there a really rude and it seems they lack humour.
I mean they'd probably be a completely different person if they were to talk on Facebook, YouTube etc. I mean people on forums are so much different to people on other websites. Why are they like this?
They don't act like that at all.
They act like all stuck-up and snobby. You can make one mistake and they will beat you up about it.

[Ken]

Because they are hidden. They know that you don't know who they are and have no way to confront them so they choose to take advantage of that and choose to "spam" or "troll"; basically abuse the forums. It's honestly quite silly and immature if you ask me. Facebook,Youtube, Twitter, and other social networks are not abused that way because you are basically forced to identify yourself and nobody wants to make that image of themselves. You'll most likely encounter these kinds on this site as well.

[Crystal]

It's because they're usually cowards in real life. On forums they can hide behind their computer screens and fake names. I wrote an article about it and posted it at Yahoo Voices. It was a way to vent about it. Anyway, I think that you'll appreciate what I had to say about it. I'll add it as my source instead of pasting it all here. I usually avoid forums.

[Brendan R]

I think it depends on the forum. This forum I'm at http://www.millenniumforums.com/forum.php are very lenient with their members. Especially the Super-Mod there. Everybody makes fun of him, and since he takes it so well everybody enjoys it when he turns around and makes fun of us because it's all in fun. It's just lots of banter with no strict rules enforcing it. In fact, no-one ever gets permanently banned on our site.

If you're into manga and anime you should give it a try. A lot of the members are funny and make insightful posts, so the community itself is pretty fun.