[nrp]

“ After I posted, the message board thread’s climate changed immediately. Not unlike real life, people were complimentary and kind. Many people deleted their mean comments — one person was so embarrassed for threatening to smash my typewriter that he apologized to me, and then went through and started trying to make other haters apologize.”

This is deeply familiar to me and is amazing to see in action. I regularly reply to people on Reddit and HN who are crapping on a product I’ve made and witness both the person’s position on the product and the thread’s overall tone change almost instantly. For whatever reason, it works less well on Twitter.

[freedomben]

It's truly amazing to me (in a bad way) how humans are on the internet. They don't seem to realize that other people are real people. There's something about a reply that snaps them out of it. I've seen it happen many times myself as well.

[munificent]

> They don't seem to realize that other people are real people.

It is hypothesized that there is a rough upper limit to the number of people our brains can naturally conceive of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

Of course, with effort, we can be mindful that in fact we are surrounded by millions of strangers, but it's not an instinctual emotional reaction. When in environment like sitting at home staring at a screen, it's easy to forget to do that cognitive work.

[lostlogin]

Something similar sometimes happens in heavy road traffic too I think.

[inigojonesguy]

By writing this I'll contradict what I'm going to say, but, generally, not applying to this thread, I observed that many times people spend their precious time to write a reply instead of using it to better understand TFA.

[parafactual]

I think it works less well on Twitter because of the constrained length of the replies. With, say, a few paragraphs, you can explain yourself well enough to garner sympathy. One lone sentence is just something else to dunk on.

[agumonkey]

maybe why in person life is radically different, people don't get the same level of raw unfiltered toxic reaction

that said I really wonder how come our brain can be so destructively egotistical when behind a screen (or a car windshield)