A memorable line from the comic strip Pogo by a very clever ex-Disney artist called Walt Kelly runs: “T’ain’t no disgrace to be stupid.” That’s self-evidently true. But it is a disgrace to be vindictive, spiteful and deliberately cruel. A recent column on this site brought a story along those lines to mind.

I had a friend who was a well-known and well-respected motoring writer. He was also a humorist, with a sometimes cutting wit that got him into trouble on more than one occasion, usually with advertisers in the various magazines he wrote for and edited. Don’t ask what he wrote about a certain Euro car company; it could get me into trouble even now. It was true, though, and probably all the more offensive to the company because of that.

On this occasion, though, he had written what I and many other people considered as simply a funny if perhaps rather obvious parody conflating drag racing and dressing in drag. Think men dressed as women in nitro-powered rails and funny cars. He was a highly skilled writer, and the story was well received by the readers of the motoring magazine which ran it. Well, by most of them.

Some members of the drag racing fraternity took offense. They were not content with writing to the magazine or ringing it, and him. Yes, they took the trouble to find out his phone number. They also found out his address, and took the additional and creepy trouble to stalk him and his family. That was the only explanation for midnight phone calls that threatened not only his life, but also that of his pregnant wife.

All this happened more than 30 years ago, so the people who insist that the Internet has created an atmosphere of anonymous rancor might like to think again. It has clearly become easier to abuse others anonymously, but it’s no different.

If you engage in what you think of as more or less crude anonymous banter, even if you’re not found out, you might like to consider this: there is not really any such thing as anonymity. Just like secrets, such comments will out in the end, and they will out where it really matters. I’m sure you’re familiar with the old saw that three can keep a secret if two are dead. It is also highly unlikely that someone who bothers to insult someone else on the web will keep that coup to himself. I’m going to use “he” for this because the idiots who do this kind of thing are often male.

So our supposedly unknown abuser will almost certainly make himself known by boasting to his friends. And this is where it gets absurd: think about it. It doesn’t really matter if people who have never heard of him anyway don’t see his name under his oh-so-tough comment. They don’t know him, so they don’t have an opinion of his manliness or cleverness or whatever. The peopled to whom he is anonymous might as well have seen his name, address and ethnicity for all the difference it would make. To the vast majority of the people who read his comments, he would be anonymous either way.

But his friends, and their friends and family and whatever, will know because he won’t be able to resist telling some of them. And if he’s been sufficiently offensive, making his comment worth repeating, more people who know him will be told about his idiocy. So the more effective his slur is, the more people will know who made it – and their opinion of him will, one hopes, suffer accordingly. After all, nobody knows only vicious morons who approve his modus operandi.

The person who has been traduced won’t know this, of course. This is a shame. They have been insulted and they have no direct recourse. But that’s life. Suck it up and go on your way, secure in the knowledge that you have not actually been injured, but that your traducer is likely damaging his reputation even as you walk away.

Oh, the guys who threatened my friend’s pregnant wife eventually found themselves in court. In a way I think they were lucky. He gave me knife-fighting lessons for a while before he died, which have proven to be quite useful since. Just keep in mind, anonymity is never guaranteed.