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Yes? I mean, I don't have issues communicating over text on HN, or the subreddits I frequent, or the Slacks, IRC channels and the mailing lists I'm on, ... What the empirical evidence shows me is that there's a (possibly very large) chunk of population which I would call unreasonable on a good day, that I only get to observe on the Internet, but can't ever find in meatspace. I know what's going on over at YouTube comments, or /r/all, but such people are all mysteriously absent from my meatspace circles, with no effort on my end to specifically identify and avoid them. I sometimes see them speaking unreasonable things when I pass them by on the street, but that's the limit of my exposure [0]. It's kind of similar to what Scott identified[1] as "dark matter people", except they seem to be inhabiting all the non-niche Internet forums. Point being, if you exclude unreasonable people, text-based communications are fine. If you include unreasonable people, I wouldn't trust face to face communications either; if someone wants to abuse you with words, they can do that just as well in physical proximity. -- [0] - Actually, the closest I've ever been to talking with such people was the couple of times during my university years when I ended up on some completely random party with people I didn't know. This suggests to me that there's a strong but barely noticeable filtering/selection effect in meatspace social networks. School selection, or workplace selection, aren't random enough to break out from it. [1] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin..., C-f "dark matter". |
And it doesn't occur to you that it's the nature of the communication (online vs face to face) that might be a factor in this?