I like offtopic's post a lot. I would say the divergence between my 2+2 persona and my "real" persona is certainly no bigger (and probably quite a bit smaller, actually) than normal real life contextual differences in my personality. The thing that I find annoying about the "I'm only a dick on the internet" types is that, in many cases, their hackles get raised when people start reacting to them negatively, and they start insisting that they are actually really nice guys. So few people seem to internalize that if you're acting like a dick, people are going to treat you like a dick.

In a somewhat related topic that I thought about making an EDF thread a while ago, I am very interested in the subject of internet memesmanship. Rickrolling seems like a classic example. It takes a trick that has been around for years and years (hello goatse), puts a slightly weird spin on it apparently arising from a couple of layers worth of inside jokes at 4chan, and becomes such an Internet thing that I read an article on it in some major media publication a couple of weeks ago. (I think Youtube's April Fool's day pushed that one over the edge.) Anyway, I'd be curious if people see any sort of patterns in what lives and what dies, aside from almost all of it coming from the same forum.