Blogonomics: The Flame Warriors

Don't mess with Jim Cramer. He went to Harvard, you know.

You swear a whole lot, but sometime you may want to learn the proper usage of "than" and "then". Your "even than" manages to make you look even less educated THAN you are, which I didn't think was possible, but THEN what do I know? I only went to Harvard.
Thanks,
Jim Cramer

On the other hand, Cramer was replying to Howard Lindzon, whose level of debate is hardly any higher:

CalacANUS (ANUS because every time his mouth open SHIT comes out)

Why is it about the internet that prompts successful fully-grown multimillionaires to descend to a level which most fourth-graders would find embarrassing? After reading 5,000 words on trolling in the NYT magazine, I'm still none the wiser.

My only real theory is that the trolling is a symptom of these men's hyperaggressive personalities, combined with a twitterific internet where increasingly people post first and think later. Plus, in Cramer's case, the fact that substantially all of his television success has come as a result of an astonishing ability to give his id free reign and to practice as little self-censorship as is humanly possible.

But when some of the most high-profile financial bloggers are this juvenile, it's easy to see the need for sites like Seeking Alpha, which force their contributors to stay on message and civil.

Also worth noting: even as this kind of thing tends to pop up in the high-testosterone world of financial blogs, it's much rarer in economics blogs. Maybe that's because in the econoblogosphere, no one's actually losing money.