And we thought a technology that "connected our minds" would bring understanding and peace? Christ, were we naive!

You've been around a long time, mcfly. Remember the Trench Knife Incident with LarryJ lo those many years and software versions ago? It seemed so obvious to me that this technology was double-edged, that in facilitating and turbocharging our ancient primate social interactions (take a drink, I said "primate"), it would amp up the bad as well as the good. The net makes it easy for tribes of the like-minded to find each other; to align the tribe's minds; and to attack their enemies' minds through all the myriad social channels on the Internet.

Flashing a picture of a trench knife at somebody through this technological mindmeld makes that knife, in a sense, "materialize" inside the other person. LarryJ's victim got to experience getting "virtually" knifed.

Or as Gamergate shows, the men's right's advocate assholes (MRAA) weaponized the net to martial powerful social forces to attack their enemies, always entirely virtually, and undeniably destructive in the real world.

I think this is a pretty good answer to all those people who told me at the time that it was "just a picture" and that things that happen on the Internet don't matter in the "real world".

Welcome to the real world. It matters here.