Lee Camp is a new buddy and someone I’ve come to admire. His messages are always right on point, and his delivery is addicting. Plus, he’s a nice guy.

This particular video, his newest, hit home with me, and it also invites discussion of a broader, more serious topic that has had a lot of media play lately: Online bullying and intimidation.

I (and several pals of mine) have first-hand experience with being harassed by a common nasty, anonymous bully. As do so many who confuse abuse for power, this particular “***hole” (to use Lee’s word) intimidates by projecting his own insecurities, frailties, and personality flaws onto his targets du jour.  More generally, people such as these often take someone’s strengths and do their best to turn them into weaknesses.

As Lee points out, it’s less likely that this kind of aggressive behavior would happen in person, face to face. And I would add that it would also personally affect way fewer people, whereas on the Internet, they reach tens, hundreds, even thousands.

Of course there are cowardly blusterers everywhere exactly like the one I’ve mentioned. In fact, minus the anonymity (although often in the shadows), Karl Rove uses many of the same tactics. But by cowering in their proverbial basements, peeking out but allowing very few, if any, in, these infantile online name-callers have a misguided sense of self-importance, swagger, even invincibility, not unlike cocky teens who drive like maniacs while multi-tasking, smoking filterless Camels, and downing toxic alcopop/Red Bull combos as they flip off the cop giving someone else a ticket.

They may very well be overcompensating for their own impotence.

So yes, it’s a disturbing trend, as Lee points out, spurred on by the ability to hide behind a computer, suffering very few, if any, real consequences… as in the case of the commenter/stalker who came too close for comfort at our old TPC site by sending me a Google map of my neighborhood as he tried to zero in on where I lived (hence, my own anonymity); as in the case of the despicable comments I constantly find myself deleting under YouTubes I’ve posted (that are not aimed at me, but at other commenters, and in the most vile terms).

So this video focused on something I think we need to examine more thoroughly. And I thanked Lee for distilling it down to 2-3 minutes so that even the most arrogant and least receptive among us might possibly grasp the effect they are having on others.

And by others, I mean real people, real people who actually respect other real people and don’t feel the need to bombard them with unsolicited insults, lies, epithets, or labels.