Many times there are folks who are more concerned with who posted something, rather than what was posted. Oftentimes this is the result of not being familiar with the substance of the post, not being able to understand it, or not being able to intelligently discuss it.
This lack of knowledge, a diminished capacity of the mind to perceive and understand some issues, or lack of intelligence generally, will often result in frustrations and even anger. Since those frustrations and anger cannot be directed towards the substance of a post they do not or cannot understand, they turn those frustrations and anger to the poster. They try to take the poster down a notch, and thus what he posted along with him, in order to make themselves feel less ignorant, less unintelligent, and generally overall better about themselves. It's very satisfying to "one-up" someone more knowledgeable or intelligent than you are, even if it is a hollow, meaningless fallacy that in reality only confirms the blissfulness of ignorance.
This is hardly a phenomenon unique to EO or even the Internet. It happens in all walks of life in nearly all situations. People should actively guard against falling into this type of trap, as it is an easy one to fall into. And a hard one to climb out of once trapped. Those who are trapped will deny it, sometimes vociferously, but will then usually immediately proceed to demonstrate to all that they are, in fact, trapped within the despair of ignorance and obtuseness. When they don't like or can't understand the message, they'll go after the messenger. It rarely works.
Sometimes none of the above is correct and they've just got a woody for someone. For example, like someone who brings up the name of another person from outside the current thread and injects into the thread, solely to take pot shot snipes at them. They resort to this type of cowardly behavior because they know that their emotionally based arguments cannot stand up to critical thinking and reasoning. When confronted directly on the issues and their stance, they will always respond by directly avoiding the issues and will instead deflect their responses to another issue altogether, rarely one that bolsters their position, but usually one that attacks the other person, either directly or indirectly. They have successfully avoided dealing with the actual issues, therefor they win, except that their woody ends up being a flaccid fallacy.
