Okay, I'll try to break it down for you. However, I'll preface this by saying I don't really think you want to understand where I'm coming from. That being said:
1. Rick starts a thread trying to mock me.
2. His thread backfires horribly and people start giving him shit about it.
3. He then starts talking down to people that are giving him shit, telling them they couldn't cut it in college, their work is the equivalent of an illegal immigrant, and that he's "higher in the food chain" than them simply because of what he does for a living.
4. In my perception that he was way out of line with that, I cut loose, letting him know exactly where I think he stands on the "food chain" relative to me - using the only type of language he understands: brute force. Mind you, what I didn't really wasn't much different that what he was doing, I just did a better job at it.
You talk so much about context, yet you act as though the post I made - the one you're referencing where you think I'm being a jerk or whatever - had no context surrounding it whatsoever. Ask yourself, why didn't I just drop the hammer on Rick with my first post in this thread? Maybe because it had to do with how Rick acted mid-way through the thread - or, in other words, because of the context of the situation. See where I'm coming from now?
For the record, I'm pretty much the same in person as I am on here: I like to make jokes and I don't take things too seriously, but I wouldn't hesitate to lay into somebody in the similar fashion if they were acting as much like a prick as Rick was. If we ever meet in person, then I'll buy you a beer (or an Appletini or whatever you Mini Boi's like to drink) and we'll likely have a good laugh about this. In the meantime, I guess we'll all just have to keep being ulta-serious with this being the internets and all.