Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

People know how to upset people.

These days, perhaps the most natural method is to reach for one's laptop and say bad things about those people to all the world.

It is quite some power, one that was exercised to its fullest by one in Ottawa against another.

The first, Elayna Katz, posted two unhappy reviews of the Mambo Nuevo Latino restaurant. The Mambo's owner, Marisol Simoes, didn't react in an entirely sanguine manner.

As the Daily Mail tells it, Simoes decided to publicly besmirch Katz's sexual proclivities.

Why she went this route many might speculate. Perhaps it's because she owns another restaurant called Kinki.

Still, an Ottawa court heard this week that Katz was suddenly the subject of sexually suggestive e-mails sent to her superiors at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

They intimated that Katz was a "tiger in the bedroom", which some might find flattering. However, they also suggested that she had once been a man and enjoyed communal sexual activities. Yes, "am open to anything -- couples, threesomes and group sex."

Worse -- at least, it could be, depending on your perspective -- Simoes then created a rather explicit dating profile in Katz's name.

You'll notice that I haven't offered any "allegedlys" in this tale. That's because Simoes was found guilty of criminal libel.

This online revenge seems a little excessive when Katz had merely posted, for example, that she had asked for no olives in her pasta and yet received diced ones secreted about its strands.

It seems positively overenthusiastic when one realizes that it reportedly went on for two-and-a-half years.

What could make someone continue along such a path for so long? Many marriages don't last two-and-a-half years. Was it simply that the availability of the online world made the prospect of inflicting immediate and constant pain easier and more delicious?

After the trial, Katz told the Ottawa Citizen: "I hope this is used as an example to people so that they recognize how severe the Internet can be. It can be used as a weapon."

What's odd is that there seems to be no concrete evidence that Katz's reviews hurt Simoes' businesses. Both Mambo and Kinki still seem to be alive.

People do so make a ridiculous mess of things, sometimes.

Katz would probably know this. She works in Human Resources.