Seeing Bruton's actions on Thursday reminded me of what I consider to be my biggest blunder on the internet. -_-
It happened back in 2004, not long after I had joined BZPower.com, the largest Bionicle fan forum. There was one fanfiction that I really liked reading and commenting on. (A bit of background info, due to the large number of people who typically comment on fanfiction there, writers are required to create two separate topics: one for the story alone and one for all of the comments and feedback.) At one point, it had been weeks since the writer had posted another chapter, so I quickly lost patience and wanted to know what was taking him so long. I even dropped an F-bomb in one of my posts (censoring only the second letter because it's a vowel). I received a warning and I quickly apologized for getting carried away with my actions. Not long after that, the writer decided to close the review topic and create a new one, due to everyone's impatience making a mess of things in the old topic. I wasn't the only one responsible for such bad behavior, but I never denied that I was part of the problem, and I felt very guilty about it for a long time.
That incident is the only time I have ever cursed in any online response (post, email, etc.). I certainly didn't want to risk going though that again, and I still don't, which is why, no matter how angry or frustrated I get, you will
never see me use profanity online. I guess for some people, some lessons just need to be learned the hard way. (Though in Bruton's case, it seems some people need to learn such lessons harder than other people. <_< )