Roe vs. Wade, Xbox Live, and Bratty Kids

I had posted, albeit briefly, over Twitter a couple days ago regarding a personal curiosity that had found its way into my head.  I’d been reading a book called Freakonomics lately, which drew a rather surprising conclusion between the Roe vs. Wade case and the sudden decline in crime in the mid-late 90s.  I don’t have all the details memorized, but a /very/ rough outline of that portion of the chapter revolved around how children born into adverse conditions (lower class neighborhood + single mother, etc etc, I can detail it more if someone really wants to know, but I’m tired right now…  I really recommend reading the book, Levitt and Dubner did a wonderful job with it) were more prone to felonious behavior as they aged, and that the crime rate suddenly plummeted right around the time that those children would have reached the age to start, were it not for the fact that Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion, and a lot of those children ended up not being born because the mothers were able to get an abortion and not bring a child into these unfortunate living conditions.

While my thought process wasn’t quite along those lines, it still got me thinking.  With as much time as I spend around Xbox Live as of late, I hear more and more people that exhibit…  well, patently disgusting behavior.  Racism towards blacks, jews, severe homophobia..  things we’ve all come to expect from online gaming around a public group.

Working from John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, we also know that (normal person) + (internet) + (anonymity) = total dickwad.  What I wonder, though, is whether certain behaviors tend to branch out of one particular social group.  Are the lower-class white kids more prone to racism, while the richer amongst us are more general dickbags?   Who’s really more prone to throw the n-bomb like it’s a comma, black people or white people?    Or is this all just a load of  pointless thought process, and every group on the internet is equally responsible for everything?

It’s all kinda hearsay based on personal experience right now, but finding out certainly would be interesting.

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