This is essence of doing something for the "lulz".

I agree though, giving in all too often to bad behavior won't curb it, it only encourages more bad behavior.

Certainly some of the blame falls on MS and Sony for forcing such a model in the first place, then not handling these attacks?

You honestly think this is worse than death and rape threats that push people out of their homes?

No, I don't.

Given that I've watched people live-tweet their rape/death threats over the last few months for the crime of being in the games industry your post comes off as, at best, incredibly tone deaf.

Fine, have it your way.

Do you ever make constructive contributions to discussions, or do you just express outrage at your purposeful misinterpretations of other people's remarks?

Scale. A death/rape threat only targets a single person. This type of attack causes much less harm to any individual, but that harm is multiplied by many individuals. Our intuition about relative harm (and bassicly everything else) breaks down across such large scales.

So a rape or murder is better than giving 100,000 an inconvenience because it effects less people?

WOW.