My somewhat sarcastic theory is that it's about power.
Normal people have a need to feel powerful, and for those who are not especialy powerful, or who have an especially intense need for these feelings, the easiest thing to do is to hurt someone. One option is to attack downwards - direct nasty behaviour to service people, children, animals, and identifiable minorities; no need to go online. But the internet lets you post anonymous attacks on those you perceive as more powerful than you - as well as the usual attacks on e.g. women who dare to express opinions in public. And the perps in this particular case did so very creatively and skillfully. No honesty involved - but that's just emulating those more powerful than them.
It's probably a good thing that I'm not "normal" - I don't get pleasure out of hurting people I don't know, or even people I do know, for that matter. And it doesn't do anything at all to assauge my feelings of powerlessness. (OTOH, I can easily imagine being satisfied by an attack on people who have harmed me, even if all they were doing was "saving money". So I'm not much 'better' than normals; that story had me fantasizing about doing something similar to the CEO of whatever business screwed me over most recently :-( rather than merely writing accurate bad reviews and switching my business elsewhere. Fortunately (for them) I'm pretty sure, from less spectacular experience, that this wouldn't actually make me happy, outside of malicious fantasy. Whereas writing another accurate bad review probably would.)
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Normal people have a need to feel powerful, and for those who are not especialy powerful, or who have an especially intense need for these feelings, the easiest thing to do is to hurt someone. One option is to attack downwards - direct nasty behaviour to service people, children, animals, and identifiable minorities; no need to go online. But the internet lets you post anonymous attacks on those you perceive as more powerful than you - as well as the usual attacks on e.g. women who dare to express opinions in public. And the perps in this particular case did so very creatively and skillfully. No honesty involved - but that's just emulating those more powerful than them.
It's probably a good thing that I'm not "normal" - I don't get pleasure out of hurting people I don't know, or even people I do know, for that matter. And it doesn't do anything at all to assauge my feelings of powerlessness. (OTOH, I can easily imagine being satisfied by an attack on people who have harmed me, even if all they were doing was "saving money". So I'm not much 'better' than normals; that story had me fantasizing about doing something similar to the CEO of whatever business screwed me over most recently :-( rather than merely writing accurate bad reviews and switching my business elsewhere. Fortunately (for them) I'm pretty sure, from less spectacular experience, that this wouldn't actually make me happy, outside of malicious fantasy. Whereas writing another accurate bad review probably would.)