I think it goes beyond the crowd venting their collective frustration. I think Paul was elevating himself to almost an archetype of a comic book villain, complete with the comedy, ignorance, stubbornness, and malice that goes with that. The reason people reacted that strongly is only because his behavior was that bad. I dunno. I can't pretend that the Internet is some fantasy land where everybody takes the high road. It is a place where we build things up, as well as tear them down. It's a mirror, and I know if I saw someone treat someone else like that IRL I wouldn't be able to hold my tongue. I would hope I wouldn't be the only one quite honestly. Just because things can go viral on the internet quite easily doesn't mean that the individual reactions to the stimulus aren't valid, it just means there are more of them. At the same time, this type of piling on could easily be directed at the wrong person with just the twist or absence of one or more key facts. Then what? I think it's completely sane and valid to cast a suspicious eye on mob justice. In this case though, I can't really say that I have a problem with what unfolded. >Realistically speaking, how much of your day should some tool who sucks at customer service and the one guy who wrote in about it take up? How does it affect your life? What impact will it have? This particular situation, I'd put on par with watching a funny movie or some comedy clips on youtube. It's right in line with some fairly innocuous and enjoyable media consumption activities in my book.
My basic point is this: if you see someone acting poorly in real life, you can say "hey, buddy, cut it out." But if you see someone acting poorly on the internet, you can do the same... without the benefit of first-hand knowledge of the situation. Worse, if you want to say "die nigger die" but social mores prevent you from doing so in person, the internet gives you all the cover you could possibly want.
The viral megaphone trait of the Internet is a function of the technology itself, and has facilitated tremendous good an ill. Much like technology itself it is neither good nor bad, it just is, and the way we employ it says a lot about us rather than the tool itself I think.
The more I look at it, the more I recognize that anonymity is used far more for doing the things we aren't proud of than the things we are.