QUOTE : In all my time as an activist, I've never seen a single instance where the people instigating abuse, even in the worst possible cases, thought they were the 'bad guys'. There is always a righteous undertone.<br /><br />Dehumanization works its mental magic, and turning the target into a 'villain' provides the attacker with the chance to be a 'hero'. You can rationalize doing all kinds of things to a symbol that you would never do to a human. The campaign becomes a false battle between good and evil, and tormenting someone is seen as a struggle over something much larger than either of you. That's the key ingredient in the magic trick that, in the abusers' minds, turns screaming at a game developer's father through a telephone into defending an entire artistic medium from censorship.