>I am both troubled and intrigued by the recent discussions about community standards, censorship, freedom of speech, need to blow off steam, political correctness, off-ramps, insults, profanity and vulgarity.
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>I am not naive. I've been around and seen and heard a lot of things. But I am amazed at the intensity with which some here seem to be attacking long-established concepts of dignity, respect, courtesy, modesty, self-control and honor.

40s here. But I don't think age has a correlation with your post. I know a 74-year-old on another forum that's as nasty as can be, and a 20 year old that's extremely civil always :)

A couple contributing factors to your comments:

1) Social attitude today, as permeated through the media. It's largely self-fulfilling and epidemic.
2) Virtualness - it's often a lot easier to "dis" at a safe distance.
3) Web people. Those with the inclination to get up and active on the web are primarily pro-active "strong personality" types, that will tend to be more outspoken than those reticent to become web-involved. Web people tend to think faster, and speak faster (order reversed often) <s>