When you feel uncomfortable with your image you can move away, get new personality. Hardly possible in the real life.
When you look in the mirror, you see an image of yourself. But people aren't mirrors. Modern way of life (living in big cities) allows you to pick who you socialize with and completely ignore all other human beings. Some find that disturbing, but that's how it is. Living in a big city made me that way. I equally don't give a fuck what people think irl just like I'm not caring on the internet. But I don't provoke irl people because dealing with them can be much harder than it is on internet.
Internet is the perfect medium for intelligent people to went out their frustration with actions of those less intelligent by toying with them online, without possible physical repercussions. And seeing how world gets dumber with every passing minute and how every newborn is somehow being shaped into obedient sheep that follows certain trend without using his own brain to analyze his doings, I must say that we'll see more "fucked up" and "disturbing" stuff on the internet which will mainly come from frustrated intelligent folks who must went their steam somewhere. Of cours, part of disturbing stuff is actually coming from psychos.
Perfect example of what I'm talking about are pictures that Armpit is linking, someone find that fucked up and work of disturbed mind, but some see it as a portrait of increasingly brainless society we're living in.