Internet tough guy

This second ad from Mindfire Academy features career advice from a preteen cyber bully, America's most beloved genre of person… This little bastard is so unlikeable that I'm starting to understand why someone would want to tamper with children's aspirin. So you're browsing 4chan or Facebook one day, tweeting about politics or a television series or what have you, minding your own business, when you inadvertently end up offending the sensibilities of a certain breed of person. A person who claims to possess a 33rd degree black belt. A person who has a portrait of Kratos or Chuck Norris as their profile picture. A person whose vocabulary consists of "fag", "ur mom", and "ur gay". A person who claims to know where you live, and none-too-politely insists that you revoke whatever you said that offended them, lest they join you there so you can try saying it to their face.

Wondering how this charming stranger could possibly have any clue as to where you live, because it's not as if you're so stupid that you'd post your address online, you head to their webpage and try looking at some of the photographs they've uploaded, wherein you notice something interesting. Far from the imposing, mean-eyed brute their online persona would suggest, instead you're met with the sight of a fedora-wearing dork in his early 20s. Perhaps you should take him up on that offer to do battle after all?

What you've encountered is an "internet tough guy", also known as an "armchair warrior" or, more colorfully, a member of the "101st Chairborne Division": meaning a person who acts big and tough and ferocious and opinionated from behind the shield of Internet anonymity, but is most likely a pathetic loser in actual life. Internet tough guys challenge people to fights they can't actually win because they know there's little to no chance opponents could or would actually take them up on said challenges. The mere act of threatening someone, and the chance someone might be intimidated by that charade, as opposed to actually winning a fight, provides the threat-maker with all the ego boost they need.

Characteristics
A defining trait of internet tough guys is that of making hollow threats — endlessly insisting that they will commit acts of violence and/or rebellion against their perceived opponents that they wouldn't actually commit in a million years. A relevant example is the conservative blogger who claims they're going to shut down their business, Go Galt, and take their family and guns to a shelter in the wilderness to escape the black helicopters sent by Obama, in anticipation of the second American Civil War/2nd Coming of Jesus/invasion by North Korea. In reality, all they're going to do is stay there at their keyboard bitching, and if the police or military ever actually did come to their house, they'd be either dead or arrested within seconds. Whoops.

Examples of internet tough guys
Yeah, dude, whatever. tl;dr.

"You're going to unfriend me on Facebook? Oh no! Please, not that! Anything but that!" You are making the assumption here that the people you are threatening to shun will lament it, as opposed to welcoming it.

Dave Bara


Science fiction author Dave Bara comes to the aid of his twin brother Mike, who writes what is supposed to be non-fiction but is so full of errors it reads just like SciFi.

Conservapedia
Conservapedia is notorious for claiming to be tough and running away as soon as someone pays attention enough to respond. Andrew Schlafly once boasted that he'd debate any liberal, then hastily backpedaled when someone took him up on the offer.

Conservative boasted that he'd debate any atheist, but only if they were willing to donate $17,000 to his choice of Christian charity, thinking that that would put anybody off debating him so that he would then be able to claim that all atheists are indeed uncharitable, cowardly, and dodge debates. When two RationalWiki users separately took him up on this offer, matching the conditions, he suddenly remembered that he'd be very busy for the next few years. This didn't stop him from editing Conservapedia over 700 times the first week he was "busy", as well as also deleting any mention of the challenge during this time.

Conservapedia has subsequently written an essay challenging Penn Jillette to a debate, and has also challenged Kyle Kulinski as well. Neither of these escaped the attention of RationalWiki, who reminded Conservapedia that Conservative still owes it a debate.