[gaius]

This sort of thing makes us _look_ dumber

Context is important; your friends in the pub know when you are joking, or not entirely serious, or making a rhetorical point, or playing devils advocate, or are referencing an earlier conversation, or telling an inside joke, or have just misunderstood something. Random strangers on Twitter read everything as an unequivocal statement. And respond accordingly.

[ritchiea]

My interpretation of the original comment isn't that context is key, it's that the internet amplifies the kind of extremist speech that wouldn't reach very many people pre-internet. For example: a suburban white supremacist in 1985 might feel isolated and alone, the same person in 2018 can publish their hatred on Twitter & Medium find like minded bigots on web forums.

[Quarrelsome]

exactly that but less so "extremist" more so "common". We've managed to forget about what the "common" sort of opinion is like. An opinion poll about the death penalty or immigration is a quick way of seeing that society at large is somewhat detached from what people assume is the "norm" from the world of edited media circa 1990 - 2010.

When the internet exploded that "average" was still glued to the TV and nerdy wasn't cool. Even in the 2000s you still had to run a PC to attach which is still a bar to hurdle. Today though we now have a generation that has grown up with internet enabled devices as a default feature in their phones, consoles, TVs or other formally "dumb" boxes. Now _everyone_ is online and perhaps that is just what we're seeing here as the bar for internet access has completely vanished.

[vannevar]

If anything, we are the extremists: I suspect that 90% of the readership of HN was in the top 10% of their high school class, or above. Everything in our daily lives filters out the voices of the other 90% of the world, because for the most part, our friends and the friends of our friends resemble us. This is the social bubble everyone talks about. I just think we consistently underestimate just how powerful that bubble is at insulating us, until we see dramatic evidence in politics or the mass media, or we stumble out of it somewhere online.

[gaius]

Indeed. Earlier today I replied to a comment that said

Perceiving white males to be hard done by is amusing

I guess the poster of that never even considered the white males in former industrial regions. Or worse, considered that they deserved to lose their livelihoods because of their race and gender being "wrong". It's that kind of smug attitude that lead directly to Trump and Brexit.

[markdog12]

This is an excellent point. In other words, pub talk taken on good faith, internet talk taken on bad faith.