[lapcat]

I think the issue goes beyond moral grandstanding. If you read Hacker News, for example, you see plenty of technical grandstanding every day.

I think we humans are simply unprepared for interacting with random strangers online. Our monkey brains did not evolve for that. In most social situations, our opinions are tempered by knowing the other person, or at least being in the same room with them. It's rare that you would say the same thing face-to-face with another person that you would say to them online.

Online, it's often a show where you're playing to an audience, instead of having a one-on-one conversation with another person. You're not actually talking to the person you're talking about. The incentives are to act, to create drama.

[psunavy03]

> If you read Hacker News, for example, you see plenty of technical grandstanding every day.

Oh, you see plenty of moral grandstanding on non-technical articles, too. It's just as likely to be some strange over-analyzed and unrealistic niche belief system as it is a platform plank of either of the two major American political parties.

As expected for a place which attracts engineers and the like, because one of their failure modes is assuming that they can engineer the entire world. Every major social problem has a "rational" engineering wrong explanation, because all people (including them) are only ever quasi-rational beings.

[xboxnolifes]

> Online, it's often a show where you're playing to an audience

I think this is the most important part. It's not just online vs offline. Even how people converse in DMs differs from public postings (not as good as offline, but different than public online). Instead, many interactions are done with the intent to gather an audience that agrees with you, so you can beat down your opponent by what is essentially intimidation. Or at least make it fruitless for your opponent to even try to defend themselves.