From your descriptions, it sounds like the Reddit example is a case of sadism or psychopathy.
Yep. But I am not a mental health professional. We should note that the "Dark Triad/Tetrad" model is a model for folks who are not "mentally ill" in the common sense. It is more like a personality model than it is an illness model, if you get my meaning.
I would wonder if somebody who has a few psychopathic traits (aka, not a serial killer or obviously bad person) is somehow enabled/triggered by the anonymous nature of the internet.
I, at least, would find that likely - lack of accountability is a major enabler of ad behavior.
So it's not that they sought it out initially, so much as they lack empathy, and simply don't connect the dots that other people online are like other people in real life.
Or at least it helps them conveniently ignore the fact, yes.
In addition, online interactions do an end-run around some of the feedback loops that govern thought, emotion, and behavior. Healthy people react to vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language subconsciously. Text-based communications do not engage some of your normal behavioral systems... so you behave differently, and even feel differently about those behaviors.
So, from the reddit example - that man may actually be a perfectly fine human being in person. He has empathy, and may actually care when dealing with people in the real world. Remove the vocal tones and body language that tells him about the feelings of the other person... and he becomes a class-A jerk, because part of what makes him a nice guy isn't engaged any more. He may honestly not have the feeling that they are human beings, because the buttons that tell him they are have not been pressed.
We generally never see "good" people rise up and take out the bad guys. There should be countless incidents of nerds using their IT powers to Dox, SWAT or show up at a doorstep to confront the tormentors.
Aside from the personal risk involved, and how it usually takes a significant amount of technical skill or knowledge to do so, you mean?
Most of us require clear sanction from our community before we take action. "War", for example, is such a sanction. And note how rising up and taking out the bad guys, even with such sanction, has repercussion on us - things like PTSD.
