The Net has always had a distinct and prominent ethos. In the "pre-dot-com" days (the watershed occurred about mid-1995), the ethos was one of genteel communal responsibility. Lately it's become:

Of course, this ethos could change or give way to other attitudes, just as the first did when the exclusive club gave way to the raucous marketplace. But there's something reinforcing this ethos that isn't going to change because it's essential to the Web: Any --any -- online statement is just a click or two away from being dismissed, forwarded, or exposed. It started with the TV remote, but the mouse is orders of magnitude more powerful. The Power of Click™ has changed the writer/audience calculus forever.

Granted: intelligent, self-confident, assertive people gravitate to the Web, and at least for the present they are exposed to an ethos that reinforces assertive behavior. These factors may change.

But this won't: It will always be true that users will be able to dismiss and/or condemn immediately and with ease that which they don't like. That's power, and each new crop of users is initiated quickly. Regardless of how much (or little) they assert themselves in other aspects of their lives, that amount generally increases significantly when they go online.

Digression:

A few of you might recall a widely distributed 1950s safe-driving spot in which the man (sorry; I can't change 45 years ago) takes the family driving. A nice, pleasant, attentive man; but as he slips behind the wheel he does a rough, pre-digital morph into an aggressive beast. The 1990s computer user doesn't have 3 tons of steel to throw around and most are only assertive, not aggressive; but the personality transformation has has some similarities.

Consequences