Tell you what, Mark: I won't play pop psychologist (for long) but I'll try to offer some insight.
It's wrapped up in the question: how much combat flying time have you had in real life? I submit that when your profession is trying to turn another human being into an expanding cloud of hair, teeth and eyeballs before they can do it to you, one gets a certain (shall we say) "Hateful" attitude about the whole thing. Combat flight sims are hardly the real thing, but a shadow of that attitude manifests here, too. Some of the stuff I've read (and, I admit, participated in) here is actually pretty tame when compared to the callous, chest-thumping attitude I've seen (and, I admit, participated in) in real ready rooms.
I'm 38, an educated and (normally) disgustingly polite professional flying nothing more dangerous than a desk these days, but when I "strap on" in a game where my goal is to spread your brains all over the perspex of your canopy it's pretty counterproductive (IMHO) for me to worry about your feelings. This (and other) BBS venues related to what we do in the game are going to reek with the same attitude.
I fly Red Baron a lot these days, and people are (sometimes disgustingly) polite there because the atmosphere is one of a pseudo-chivalry as glorified by the writers of the time. I'll tell you, though, that attitude really cheeses off some of the "real" pilots. I've mentioned my friend the former B-29 driver. In the War they never let an enemy chute go without trying to get the pilot, and they expected (and got) no differently from the enemy. Conventions aside, when you've seen people you know and like gunned down by an enemy pilot when they were hanging in a 'chute, you make damned sure none of them make it to try again if you can help it. In the game, sometimes people get upset when they blow all their ammo and then tell everyone so as though it's a free ticket out. As if. You might as well ask for mercy because you just blew your energy advantage in the middle of several angry nmes. It's a game, but it's a game about war, and your job is to make everyone dead who's not on your side. Making people dead is a Hateful occupation.
"Hate"ful things went on (and go on) every day in real war that never made it into print and which would shock and even disgust civilians if they learned of it. War is Hell. Try it, you'll Hate it. In the meantime, it's just the related spirit some people choose to bring into simulations of that Hell.
When I fly WW2, I purposely fly the Wuerger. I like to fly in fast, get really close, and blow you back to the Hell you came from with big guns that make big holes, not dance some foo-foo stallfighting silliness that makes me think of ballet slippers on the pedals. Hate helps. It's not you, Mark-whatever that I Hate, it's the representation of you that has the effrontery to be flying an aircraft of the Hated Enema that's uglying up my sky. If you put too much of your own, personal self into that cockpit, all kidding aside, I submit you might be doing your ego some damage.
In the end, in the sim, it's all in fun and we can go back to our desks and Hate the boss, instead (unless you're one and the same, then you can Hate yourself).
Just my piddly $0.02, and damn the exchange rate.
