In general, I think "internet personas" play a role- where the real-life person may be much more enjoyable, tolerable, likable, etc. to certain people. (I'll confess... it's a topic that interests me, i.e. how you are in real-life versus how you manifest yourself in a structured environment around people that you would not tend to associate with outside of those environments.)
I would think that a lot of people have different "personas" depending on where they are, and they're behavior tends to changes in those environments. I think that happens at work, too.