[matthew-wegner]

There is a space of sorts with the phone, but it did take awhile to develop. My understanding of the early history of the telephone is that people conceived of it as like talking to someone in the other room. You can hear them, but not see them—but they’re there with you.

Now we do have very distinct telephone habits, a telephone style of speaking, etc. Try using phone inflection in person sometime; it’s very jarring. “Hey. Yeah. It’s Matthew. I’m sorry, one sec, I need to…”

In an abstractly similar way, a lot of HN comments share some qualities, even from different people (including this one).