I'm not saying other forms of harassment aren't worse or disgusting (they are, absolutely more so), I'm just saying this is also disgusting.
Anita used "You suck" as an example of online harassment at her talk at the UN, is that inherently worse that "set yourself on fire"?
I'm not trying to marginalize harassment, I think there is harassment out there that is obviously harassment and obviously repugnant, but I think when it comes to the less "obvious" cases like above, it's still important that even these smaller examples of hateful speech are harmful.
I don't even really think it's a matter of the speech itself. I try to be a bit more civil, but I'm sure I've said the equivalent of "you suck" to someone online. But when you have dozens or hundreds of people dedicated to calling you an idiot, it has a multiplication effect. Even the death threats I find pretty easy to laugh off, but if you're on the receiving end of hundreds it becomes much more unsettlingafter all you only need the one crazy in thousands to turn the threats into reality.
I don't really see a great and easy way to legislate the difference though. Cyberstalking itself is perhaps easier to target, but there's still a lot of grey involved. Are you going to ban someone from individual web sites? Where people are often anonymous, how do you prevent interactions?
That said yeah, I don't consider it "violence". While I hate that some people treat "it happened on the internet" to mean "then it doesn't really matter", there's still differences between conduct online and in the real world that merit consideration.