Newsgroups, those virtual chat areas where people can talk, argue, and contemplate anything that they wish. Here at Tech, it's one of the main ways that people communicate what's going on at school and in their own lives. In my observation of these newsgroups over the past year, I have noticed that there are several different personalities that appear on newsgroups, and you can generally find one of each on every 'group. Here they are, with descriptions of each type.
CAPITALIST: Capitalists see the word socialism, communism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, or any other type of socialist -ism and immediately go off the deep end. They claim essentially that the person who mentioned it is a Commie and go on to point out the faults of said doctrine. Such people generally do not know the difference between the various types of socialism, probably not even knowing what socialism is in itself, and assume they are all the same, no matter how much the victim of the attack tries to point out that's not what (s)he is talking about.
COMPLAINER: Complainers post complaints, obviously. Rarely does anything good come out of their posts. One would think that the Complainers would be bred by the most bitter majors (ChemE for example), but often they rarely have anything terribly awful they need to complain about.
FLAME BAITER: Flame baiters enjoy tossing out some sort of comment that no one will agree with, probably not even the person who wrote agrees, just to see how many people will get angry at them. These people would make good talk show hosts as well.
"FLUFF" CREATOR: This person always has something to say, although it generally is not anything of any importance. Somehow, there are always a few people who will find the fluff interesting enough to post a response to, and the thread will often expand to +100 posts.
LURKER: Lurkers just read the newsgroup. You might see them on your favorite server and see that they are reading news, but they will never post even when you ask them to show some courage and post.
OLD FLAMER: Same as a flame baiter (see above); however, they pick up on a thread that's been dead for several weeks / months and decide to start the argument up again.
SOCIALIST: The poor victim of the Capitalist (see above). (S)he might mention something related to socialism once, and be branded a socialist of some form forever. No matter how much they deny it or try to switch sides, the Socialist will be so branded for the rest of their existence on the newsgroup.
Those are all of the personalities I have seen the most noticeable on Tech newsgroups lately; keep an eye out for another installment coming soon.