(FORTUNE Magazine) – I'm being stalked in cyberspace. Hey, I'm not a naturally paranoid kind of guy, but I'm beginning to feel as if people are watching me to make sure I don't say the wrong thing. And it's making me wonder just how civilized cyberspace really is.

Back when we were Neanderthals, we didn't have any rules. We ran around grunting and knocking each other on the head with spiked clubs. Then we worked out that life would be more productive and rewarding if we developed laws and organized ourselves into civilizations. Maybe it's time to do that in cyberspace.

Last January, after I wrote an article about Apple's bone-headed decision to buy Next, I received a piece of E-mail that concluded with this charming sentiment: "Many Mac fans that made the smart choice of buying an Apple product will have discussions about you and your death."

My editors love it when I get mail like this, but I suspect that's because they are being their usual sadistic selves. To be honest, I have always liked getting mail; you could even make a case that I became a writer to get people to write me letters. Usually, I even enjoy getting angry mail, since it tends to prove that somebody is reading my stuff well enough to have an opinion about my competence.

I say "usually." In this case, I didn't exactly appreciate getting a message about people actively discussing my death. But this kind of behavior is not unusual in cyberspace.

Let me tell you about a band of Macintosh fanatics who are roaming the digital hallways stalking people who say bad things about Apple Computer or the company's Macintosh computers. They all subscribe to something called the EvangeList (see www.evangelist.macaddict.com), an electronic-mail notification service maintained by a fellow named Guy Kawasaki, who has taken it upon himself to organize the rabid supporters of the Macintosh into a grass-roots marketing force. Kawasaki is a pretty persuasive guy who has written books about how to use evangelism to help market products. He also happens to work for Apple Computer, where his title is Apple fellow and chief evangelist. He has gotten 40,000 people to register for his near-daily missive about how to help the Mac be more successful.

One of the activities Kawasaki asks his minions to engage in is: "Write a letter to the publications that publish stupid, insipid, inaccurate, and unfair stories. (This will keep you really busy right now.) Most journalists are insecure and perceptive: after the 300th flaming message, they'll get the picture."

That's called being MacAttacked. When you show up on the EvangeList, as I have eight times in the past year, the Macintosh faithful will flood your electronic mailbox with messages if they don't like what you have to say about Apple. With 40,000 faithful, you can count on getting at least 100 E-mails each time you get on the list. Sometimes the messages are thoughtful. Often they are fearsome--vitriolic, antagonistic, malicious, personal.

These people are scary. Even the fact that I am writing this column gives me pause. Do I really want to get them mad at me again? It makes me want to hide in my cave until reinforcements arrive. Being MacAttacked is the cyberspatial equivalent of being stalked by Neanderthals with clubs.

Apple's band of zealots is so well known it has even become the subject of digital humor, as another message writer shared with me:

"Q: How many Evangelistas does it take to change a light bulb?

"A: All of them. One to publish the bulb's E-mail address and the others to mail-bomb the light bulb until it goes away!"

I should point out that fanatical computer users have been around as long as computing. Personal computing just made the fanaticism personal. During my career writing about computers, I've had to contend with hate mail from users of S-100 computers (don't ask), Apple II computers, Amiga computers, the OS/2 operating system, the Linux operating system, and so forth.

Curiously, users of Windows rarely spring up to give an impassioned defense of their operating system. Indeed, the occasional nasty response to a Microsoft column tends to come from the relatively disorganized band of people who have decided that Microsoft is an evil conspiracy to conquer the world. Here's a message I got in response to a column speculating about what it would take for Microsoft's stock to take a dive: "You're just like every other business-writing lap dog: You'll lick the face of any company that's doing well. To your credit, you at least admit that Microsoft's relationship with the business press amounts to a hypnotist among willing suck-ups. How pathetic that you seem happy to be brainwashed. That's not being a curmudgeon; that's being a weak-minded corporate whore."

That's bad, but this EvangeList is something else altogether. For example, the column I wrote two issues ago ("Confessions of a Microsoft Junkie") generated more E-mail than anything I've written since starting at FORTUNE last September. This was a column complaining about Microsoft Windows software--not something you would expect to set off the Macintosh fanatics. But when the column was noted on the EvangeList on May 1 (two days after it was published by Fortune on the World Wide Web), I started getting lots of E-mail telling me to buy a Macintosh. The EvangeList was at work once again.

To be clear, Kawasaki didn't read my column and then urge the 40,000 EvangeListas to respond. Instead, the way it works is that one of the faithful sends Kawasaki a message to post to the list for distribution to the rest of the faithful. Most of the messages contain useful information about how to find Macintosh software or use a Macintosh computer, or even news or rumors about a Macintosh vendor. But some percentage of the messages sent to the EvangeList point to press coverage that's considered relevant. Kawasaki forwards them along and takes no personal responsibility for what happens after that, except to guarantee that they don't encourage illegal activity.

I would guess that fewer than 30% of the people who wrote me about that Microsoft column are actually subscribers to FORTUNE. The other 70% were either Evangelistas or Windows users who stumbled across the column--several Websites, such as CNET's news.com (www.news.com), regularly point visitors to interesting computer-related material, even if it appears on rival sites. In other words, almost all the E-mail I'm getting about my columns is from people for whom the column was not written. So what's happening?

(1) One guy whose job is to help sell Macs mobilizes thousands of less-informed people to harass and intimidate journalists in order to further his objective of selling more computers. Doesn't that sound like demagoguery to you? To me, it is the kind of demagoguery that recalls Senator Joe McCarthy's attacks on actors, journalists, and other "subversives" in the early 1950s.

Yeah, I know Guy Kawasaki has nowhere near McCarthy's influence. And I know we're just talking about computers. But it doesn't feel like "just" anything when people start making threats.

(2) More important, the fundamental notion of a community of interest is undermined. The EvangeList was formed to serve the interests of one community; FORTUNE magazine serves the interests of another community. I write one way for FORTUNE; were I paid to write for the EvangeList (yeah, right), I'd write in a different fashion. The Evangelistas seem unable to recognize or respect the fact that different communities have different needs. In other words, there is no context on the World Wide Web. And without context, it is very hard to be valuable or useful.

(3) There was a time when writing letters was considered a basic skill for staying in touch, and it depended on a certain--mostly unspoken--etiquette. I have never received a mailed letter that was fundamentally rude and malicious; I have, however, received hundreds of E-mails that I could never show my kids.

I can't imagine why people can't exercise common decency and manners when in front of their computers. I publish my E-mail address because I enjoy interaction with readers. The price I pay is exposing myself to the handiwork of cyberdemagogues, having rude people populate my in-box with uninformed and illiterate messages, and (in a really annoying twist of fate) getting inundated with automatic distributions of press releases that I'll never read and never asked to receive. The price I pay, in other words, is being stalked in cyberspace.

But have no fear, dear readers: I will push forward in my effort to enlighten you about the digital world. And I will always enjoy getting the more creative efforts to lead me back onto the straight and narrow road, as in this missive from a somewhat more enlightened EvangeLista:

"We have not, nor will we ever have, any respect for the opinions of persons such as yourself. I know the publishers expect a steady stream of material from you, and such pressures can encourage a person to churn out such meaningless slop in order to make their deadline. Perhaps you could write for a golfing magazine instead. I hear the pace is a little slower."

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Wilton Woods

STEWART ALSOP is a partner with New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm. Neither he nor his partnership has financial interests in the companies mentioned. Alsop can be reached at stewart_alsop @fortunemail.com