Computer personalities

It has been really interesting this year to see how people act differently when they are hidden behind a computer screen and a pretend character. Andy and I play a game called Warcraft together with people from all over the world. In this game we can join a group of people we call a guild to do different things. We can chat with each other through both an IM chat and a voice service and it's a lot of fun to meet different people and get to know them.

What I find fascinating is how a lot of these people either claim or would claim to be good people, but how when they get behind a computer screen things don't matter since we are in a "different" world. They become very crude and call people things they would never say to their face. These "good people" call girls ho's and talk about sexual things they would be embarrassed by at any other time. Young men talk about raping other characters in game and some of them have never thought about what that really means and how horrible and degrading it is until I've pointed it out. Why do people react like this? We recently left one guild because we could no longer handle the disrespect that people were exhibiting regularly and have joined a guild where people really do seem to follow the rules of normal life. There I am treated like the lady I am and the language is kept to a minimum. In our new guild this game is treated like the game it is and all the normal societal rules are upheld instead of real life taking a back seat to a computer game.

I know this is random, but I have been trying to figure out why people think that all societal norms can be thrown out the window when they are hiding behind an assumed character.