It's the internet. If this is where you're going to form the kinds of deep relationships you're making it seem like people had with him, that's the first sign you need to lay off the computer. The fact that people did form what they thought was a strong, meaningful relationship with a made up person just proves it's not meaningful. It's not real. If insults from imaginary internet figures sting this much, it's time to take a step back and evaluate the relationship they have with this place and the people on it.
I guess your perspective on all this depends on the extent to which you consider online relationships to be
relationships.
I don't presume to explain the culture here, but it seems to me that on
this forum, we
assume that we are human beings, governed by ethics, engaged with others for the benefit of .. well, who knows .. but that our representations of ourselves would be the same even if we communicated by speech and not by text.
Most forums aren't at all similar; one maintains a 'persona', or avatar, or whatever the hell, and plays that part until it ceases to be amusing to either the actor or the audience, or until it violates the terms of service of the website.
I suppose, then, that the moderators here have a more difficult, or at least subjective, job of perceiving the nature of the soul posting on the AF. Quite frankly, any discussion outside of arguments that make direct use of data compiled by the site's owner is "off-topic", and worthy of a suspension or, in the Post-A-Pic threads, a (well-deserved) lifetime ban.
Poll
