I must’ve read at least 5 of these things over past few years. I found the Yale one, the Harvard I think I found one too. But I am missing another from Harvard that was called a corny title like “The Age of Outrage” which is more the one you want. It doesn’t pop up for me unfortunately. It’s interesting because I believe it had things like moral indignation or righteous indignation as justifications which say enough as terms if you look them up. Speaks about some things that are seen on the internet as a whole imo.
The psychology of Internet rage - Harvard Health
Why do so many people express themselves online in ways they would seemingly be unlikely to in a face-to-face setting? The explanation for Internet rage involves anonymity, knowledge of subject mat...www.health.harvard.edu
‘Likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online
Yale researchers looked at 12.7 million tweets from over seven thousand Twitter users to test whether users expressed more outrage over time, and if so, why.news.yale.edu
The Yale one is probably more up your alley. A biological reason why there is vitriol in personal mod dramas you mention imo is probably rooted in neuroscience in regards to addiction/reward in two ways. One is adrenaline (an effect of anger like anxiety/fear, thrill seekers get hooked on it) and another is dopamine (effects of people agreeing with comments, a reward in a sense which is positive reinforcement). That’s some of the more technical things the Yale research yielded. Said you saw it, I assume that means there’s an audience and things are more fun that way. Can search that yourself if you want to, that’s just the simplest thing to save you time if you’re really curious. Wonder how it would’ve been if no one saw it.
And if you’re somehow even more interested (it is complicated), there’s things on dark side of psychology like the dark triad similar to what Carl Jung called ‘the shadow’ of personality. I know some psychologist talked about a trait of the dark triad correlating to online trolling I believe. Not sure how many have an interest in that, personally find it fascinating though might not be to your liking (or don’t believe it’s related).
Or. Just maybe... it's as simple as people are tribal.