Re:Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit
by pessimizer on Saturday December 10, 2016 @07:28PM
(#13148843)
I'm generally nicer online than I am in person; online you can be misinterpreted, and as a cipher behind a username, your entire identity becomes what you just said. In real life, you can be a lot harsher and more blunt, because you don't have to bundle an implicit friendliness into every statement that you make:) In the proximal world, you start building up civility credit with the first handshake and smile.
That's because the behavior you are seeing online is actually not at all like the behaviors "in real life" that you are comparing them to. In person, you get a lot more information and in a vastly more narrow context, and it's much easier to interpret people under those conditions.
For one thing, if you show strong opinions online, people tend to think you're a pig-headed fool, but if you do it in person, they're more liable to think you're just blowing off steam or impassioned. Which is to say, we also tolerate things in person that we do not tolerate online very well.