I believe the phenomenon has everything to do with anonymity. I’ll give you an example. Let’s liken using the phone or in-person communications to going to our local supermarket and navigating our cart through the supermarket. You see people face to face in the supermarket. You may not know any of them, but you could at some point and so you are generally polite.

And we can compare emails & IMs more to driving our vehicles and navigating traffic. It’s the feeling of being anonymous that allows so many drivers to show their worst possible behavior in traffic where they cut people off & give obscene gestures as they bully their way through. Why? No repercussions – no one knows them. Of course, my analogy doesn’t totally work here because you know the person you communicate with via email, but yes, I agree that they feel “safe” to act like jerks and probably wouldn’t dream of doing the same in person. It’s a shame.