Online Disinhibition Effect

In psychology, the online disinhibition effect refers to the way people behave on the Internet with less restraint than in real-world situations.

Some of the six key motives:

1. You Don’t Know Me (dissociative anonymity)
2. You Can’t See Me (invisibility)
3. See You Later (asynchronicity)
4. It’s All in My Head (solipsistic introjection)
5. It’s Just a Game (dissociative imagination)
6. We’re Equals (minimizing authority)

From the Wikipedia entry on  John Suler’s The Psychology of Cyberspace