What the hell is wrong with some people? #gamergate

There's a basic principle I try to follow in life, and it's not something I came up with on my own.  Modern phrasing of that principle would be "so long as you're not harming others, do what you like."  Of course, there's exceptions to that principle, chief among them being "don't break the law" (unless you're doing the whole civil disobedience thing to highlight a wrong, you should be working to change the law as directly as possible instead), another being "try not to be a bigger dick than you have to be."  Of course, everybody's personal stance varies somewhat, but the civilization we've inherited puts a premium on letting people have differing opinions and beliefs... resorting to violence or threats of violence is left to drunks at sketchy bars, domestic abusers, street gangs, abortion clinic bombers, suicide bombers, Islamic State ruffians and the like, who may feel that they have an overriding, immediate need to make people see things their way, but whose desires are found lacking or abhorrent to the rest of us.

How, then, do we come to this pass?  Over on Twitter (which I don't actually use, because I find the important things worm their way out of there in due course, and monitoring anything important there would seem like a full-time job in and of itself), some time back, somebody started a #gamergate hashtag.  What I've gleaned to date is that the tag started as a calling-out of certain game journalists and organs for being too cozy with the developers and publishers they're covering... all good so far, any journalist should be able to refute such ties, or disclose them as part of any coverage they're providing.  Somehow, some offshoot occurred, still using the same tag, making the point of contention focus on "male dominated" gaming culture and industry culture versus the "radical feminism" of some of the females involved in the industry who dared to speak out on the topic... unpleasant, contentious, but still fair game, people having different values talking about those values, for all that talking probably descends to mockery on a regular basis (another reason I don't use Twitter... I suspect that regular exposure, much like reading many comment sections on websites, will stain the soul).

But then, somebody (likely several somebodies) has to go and cross the line.  Here's an example that crossed my path.  Somebody decided that they were pissed enough about the way that conversation was going that they threatened to rape, mutilate, and kill the person they disagreed with... and went to the trouble of finding and publishing their target's home address to really make the threat strike home.  Whatever justification that somebody wants to come up with, at the end of the day, they made a credible threat against the lives of another person and their family, over videogames... and, even if they didn't intend to carry out the threat personally, they tried to provide the necessary info for someone else to do the deed for them.

Honestly, I don't even know what to say here... I mean, odds are it's mostly a bunch of teenage boys unsure enough of their manhood that they think they need to feel some power by victimizing strangers over the Internet in ill-conceived ways, but that's hardly an excuse.  At the end of the day, maybe this guy will get caught and punished, maybe not... my fear would be that somebody really will follow through on this sort of a threat, and provide fodder for anybody with an agenda to further regulate/lock-down the Internet, or the US portion of it at any rate.  That, and the thought that somebody that unhinged over videogames might be unhinged over other topics as well, and lives in my vicinity...