The lawyer representing FunnyJunk, a site threatening to sue The Oatmeal for $20,000 for defamation, has expressed bewilderment at the Internet's negative reaction to FunnyJunk's case. "I really did not expect that [The Oatmeal] would marshal an army of people who would besiege my website and send me a string of obscene e-mails," Charles Carreon, FunnyJunk's legal representative, told MSNBC.

The Oatmeal is the site of Internet cartoonist Matthew Inman. Inman wrote in 2011 about his frustrations with FunnyJunk, saying the humor site hosted his content without attribution. FunnyJunk allegedly removed the offending material. One year later, Inman received a letter from Carreon, demanding that he produce a check for $20,000 payable to the order of FunnyJunk, LLC for defaming its operation.

While Inman set out to collect that $20,000 (and redirect it to a pair of causes, bears and cancer), Internet users set about finding Carreon's online contact information and shaming him for his actions. The attorney, who successfully litigated the sex.com case in November 2000, said to MSNBC, "I'm completely unfamiliar really with this style of responding to a legal threat—I've never really seen it before... I don't like seeing anyone referring to my mother as a sexual deviant." (Carreon is referring to Inman's drawing of a woman seducing a Kodiak bear, shown above. Inman later clarified that he intended the bear to be FunnyJunk's mother, not Carreon's.)

We at Ars were, of course, shocked to hear that an unqualified attack on a beloved Internet artist might generate a negative reaction, on the Internet, by fans of that Internet artist. We are further shocked that those fans might express those reactions through other Internet channels to the instigator of that attack, such as through a publicly available e-mail address. "It's an education in the power of mob psychology and the Internet," Carreon told MSNBC. If you were waiting for Carreon's blessing as a force not to be trifled with, Internet, you have it now.