I think there are a lot of different phenomena here that look the same from the receiving end. Some players just lose their internet connection when a train goes underground. Some surely minimize the browser window--some probably with regret because their mom or their boss walked in on them! If you're a GM (or any kind of M), you'll probably be winning when this happens because you are winning most of the time against unregistered players anyway. But I, who am no kind of M, have also had it happen when I'm losing.
Some, as Dink Heckler said, want to exact petty revenge for the humiliation of losing. I've had players run down my clock from a lost position, then immediately pick up another game. Some even resign the instant before their clock runs down, just to show they've done it deliberately.
I think cases of petty malice are more rare than it sometimes feels, but any regular online player has suffered such treatment, and some may want to give as much as they think they've received. Anonymity can breed cynicism--just as the guy who cuts in front of me on the highway may be racing to his child's birth, but I think he's an SOB trying to humiliate me, so if you're a GM and make a lot of their LPs DO in a hurry, some opponents may conclude that you're using a computer and punish you for your supposed perfidy. It strikes me that online blitz, like driving, subjects people to many small shocks and frustrations, some of them unjust, and in such environments they can anger easily. (I think that must be one reason hockey players, but not cricket or baseball players, punch each other in the mouth.)
Whatever the cause of the freeze may be, I turn off chat and, like Jupp, do something else with my time while they run out my clock. I also have tried, out of self-interest, to guard myself against anger, with somewhat better success now than when I was younger; at the same time, I try to enjoy the victory!
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