The scourge of bombastic bloggers

Words of intimidation that start as figures of speech can cast a pall over an environment that already has a built-in susceptibility to extreme language.

A few days ago, Wang Mudi, a television host in Guangdong province, accompanied his girlfriend to the hospital. The nurse did an extremely sloppy job putting her on a drip. It took her four attempts to properly inject the needle. All the while she was carrying on a casual conversation with a colleague.

Wang was so enraged he wrote on his Sina Weibo account, a Chinese micro blog, that "I felt I wanted to hack someone". The next day, a healthcare industry association demanded he apologize or his employer should sack him.