Personally, I get irritated when I read little comments that suggest expressing any kind of emotion on the net is silly or pointless. It seems to me like the people who make those comments believe the internet is magical and allows people to turn their emotions off like a light bulb. It just doesn't make sense to me. We're all human here, emotions will always be involved regardless of what the social situation is. I just fail to see what makes socializing on the internet so different from socializing over the phone, or live? You don't hear people say "Lol, why so serious? Its just the Phone/Live".
I don't know about you, but if you express something I don't like, I'm gonna get angry. If you express something funny, I'll laugh. If you express something depressing, I'll shed man tears. I'll express emotions in any situation that presents me the necessary stimuli to.
What really pisses me off is when I read comments that suggest the person who gets offended by negative comments are immature:
it's stupid for someone's feelings to get hurt over joking comments that happen to be racially insensitive. This site is for adults, and that assumes (big assumption) that people are mature enough to handle it.
So by that logic, the person making an insensitive comment is mature, while the person who gets offended by it is immature. Who the fuck came up with that rule? Flaming people and making shallow negative remarks is far from being an adult. People like that encourage negative comments because they're safe behind a computer screen and get off on the freedom of saying whatever the fuck they want. Talk that kind of crap live to the wrong crowd and you won't get flamed or neg repped, you'll get the shit beat out of you. All they're doing is making excuses to act like a child or give in to their Id.