Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?

On social media, thousands see your post but only a few react. They&#x27;re the ones that found your post much more interesting than the average person who saw it.<p>In real life, only a few people hear what you say but they feel socially obligated to react in some way. So you get bland, polite reactions. They&#x27;re the people that, if they&#x27;d seen your post on social media, wouldn&#x27;t have replied at all.<p>In a nutshell: on social media, you broadcast to a huge potential audience, and your actual audience chooses you. In real life, your ideas only get to a small number of people who may not have chosen to listen to you. The interest levels of these two audiences are naturally very different.

For in-person discussions, we should probably factor in the nature and depth of the relationship.<p>For example, if I&#x27;m just chatting with someone at the park, I don&#x27;t expect them to welcome a serious critique of views they espouse.<p>But if I&#x27;ve known that person for a long time, and we&#x27;re invested in each other, then I&#x27;m more likely to challenge or at least discuss touchy matters.<p>Internet discussions, depending on the forum, tend to be somewhere in the middle. Being in a particular forum signals that people <i>want</i> to discuss certain topics. And anonymity allows a certain boldness, but it also means greater risk of being misunderstood or being treated uncharitably.

HN is a strongly self-selected group of people, with rules against bad-faith arguments. But you can find groups like that in real life too.<p>The special thing about online is that when an obscure topic comes up, someone from the 0.0001% of people with deep knowledge of that subject can chime in. That dynamic basically never happens IRL, because you need a million eyeballs.<p>Like, outside of NASA, where would you encounter such a cluster of people with specific knowledge as in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31136285" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31136285</a> ?

People don&#x27;t feel guilt online, generally, because they either forget the person they are talking to is a vulnerable human, or they just imagine them as someone deserving of their vitriol.<p>However, as soon as they are sat in front of someone and are picking up on the visual clues in facial expressions and body language which make it clear that what they are saying is actually affecting a real person with feelings, almost everyone has a profound sense of empathy or guilt.

The main reason is that almost all content online comes from people who are mentally ill. Commenting or creating anything online is really weird. Normal people don&#x27;t do this, so you&#x27;re interacting with a very different group of people on your computer than in real life.<p>&gt; people in real life seem so much more complacent and uncritical compared to people online<p>This is just to avoid conflict. I&#x27;m sure they feel the same way internally

The simple answer: online lacks all the visual and aural feedback mechanisms that are automatic in face-to-face interaction. That radically changes how people act.<p>All the social norms that have 100,000 years of biological and sociological development that are kept in-check by visual feedback from others around us are taken away online.<p>This also applies to things like sales - face-to-face direct sales is far more efficient and effective than doing the same by phone or online. You can close deals far higher $$ amounts face-to-face because people can &quot;read&quot; each other. Online works just fine for simple, low $, low risk transaction - that&#x27;s Amazon&#x27;s sweet spot, for instance.<p>I&#x27;ve been in high tech sales for 30 years - with early experience at HP selling test equipment with average selling price (ASP) of $20K-$1M. I&#x27;m still in that general market. The sales training you get at Fortune 20 companies addresses most of this difference both directly and indirectly. The latter in includes noticing how direct sales works and what can be sold that way vs. what can not with telephone and online sales (the risk level of $1M piece of equipment even for the largest corporations absolutely requires a lengthy face-to-face process).

I do recall being at a dinner back in the &#x27;80s, where someone starting going on about how evil a MUG player was because he killed so many personae (particularly his own) and what he&#x27;d do if he ever met said person in RL.<p>At which point, someone else said &quot;That&#x27;s him sitting over there&quot; pointing to a player on the opposite side of the table. Next thing it was &quot;Wow, really pleased to meet you!&quot;.<p>It was a lasting lesson to me about what people say online and how they actually behave in RL (and taught me to ignore people saying they would firebomb my house if they didn&#x27;t get their points back).<p>Unfortunately there are unstable people who get really confused between RL and what goes on in their head; the media have a field day with them.

Uncritical of what? I avoid talking about religion and politics with everyone (family, co-workers, acquaintance) for obvious reasons.<p>Ignoring those hot button issues, I still need to be careful not to be critical of people.<p>- At work I&#x27;ve had a co-worker nearly get fired for telling another she &quot;doesn&#x27;t know what she&#x27;s talking about&quot;. He got &quot;written up&quot; but ended up finding a better job a short time later.<p>- At work I need to avoid certain words that might be viewed as a &quot;micro aggression&quot;.<p>- I need to avoid offending certain family members or they&#x27;ll start yelling or storm out. Some family members get super offended if you make any kind of suggestion on how they can fix a given problem.<p>- Around strangers I need to avoid anything that might piss someone off and have them retaliate with force. I once honked at a car for not moving during an advance green and he followed me for miles. (The guy was flashing his lights and flipping me off the whole time).<p>(Edit: Added line break for lists)

The thing is in the online world you are <i>at places where people expect to discuss</i>. On top you simply <i>don&#x27;t see</i> the people who don&#x27;t discuss or comment and just spectate.<p>If you go to a debate club in real life you will be able to debate just as well, because everybody who is there is there to debate. Ot would be weird for someone to be there if they did not.<p>If you talk to some random person at work it is very likely that they just want to get shit done with as little hassle as possible. This usually does not involve debating about things endlessly.<p>I love a good debate. I grew up with debates in comment sections and I am of the type that you can mud-wrestle with until you realize I enjoy the thing. Yet even I don&#x27;t <i>always</i> want to debate. Sometimes I prefer to eat my food in silence, or not talk to the guy sitting next to me on the subway.<p>I like debate when I am in the mood for debate. This is often, but not always and not anywhere.

It&#x27;s impossible to convince most people of even the most obvious truths. The wisest path is to fake agreement, keep your thoughts for yourself and move away ASAP.<p>Online it seems you can get away with more honest talk without consequences. Or at least it used to. Now it&#x27;s getting more like offline.

In my case, I&#x27;m able to express my opinions better while writing than talking. I had vocal and speech defects in childhood that made me a hesitant talker. Though they improved over the years, the mental inhibitions have persisted.<p>Another (more recent) reason for my multiple personae is that I hold some unwelcome views about politics, society, religion etc. They can result in actual physical harm or state intimidation where I live.<p>So not only do I have different personae in real life and virtual, but I have multiple virtual personae too for different interest areas. The anonymous ones are where I&#x27;m most open and honest.

- I think people are more likely to be polite in person (perhaps it is more obvious that retaliation might happen or perhaps it is just being socialised to different norms).<p>- In person, I think people are more likely to ‘fill the space’ in small groups and so the average thing that is said is low-entropy and polite whereas online (at least here) there is more of an attitude of only contributing when you have something to say and I think on average it is easier to have something to say that is critical than positive (and often there may be many unique seeming criticisms and fewer positive things even if the latter should carry more weight). In large groups where it is more likely that critical opinions may exist, I think people are just less likely to speak up in the real world.<p>- there may be more criticism online but that doesn’t mean the feedback is good online or in the real world. I think it’s very hard to tell apart the useful (ie good) feedback from the useless.

Loud minorities. You only notice the bad parts.<p>Hiding behind a pseudonym&#x2F;anonymity allows people to hold back less.<p>You probably don&#x27;t talk much to teens&#x2F;children irl. You do online.<p>Less &#x2F; no social repercussions to being a cunt.<p>People who are bitter and angry and troll on forums may not go outside much irl, so you don&#x27;t meet them.<p>If you are outside the US, you get to experience the exported political polarization from the US which you may not have where you live.

#1 skin in the game.<p>In person interactions can have greater immediate consequences than online actions. If someone is in your social group, you might see them again and have to deal with the consequences of actions&#x2F;behavior. Positive impressions can reward you in the future.<p>#2 Reputation and anonymity<p>You can&#x27;t easily reboot your IRL identity and reputation, but usually can on forums like HN

Because people don’t want physical violence and - tbh - have you ever been in a heated discussion before? Sometimes it does result in physical violence.<p>There’s also an aspect to online discussion where there’s a naturally slower cadence. Things can escalate very quickly offline because you’re physically there and engaged. You’re incentivized to not escalate it cause pain&#x2F;damage. People escalate very quickly for no reason all the time. I’ve experienced the result of this first hand plenty - again, people are horrible at managing their emotions. Most people are not really any smarter than a three year old when it comes to managing their emotions - they just put up a big barrier to make it seem like they’re better at it. When violence is a subtext - like a dog that might bite you - you’re cautious about your approach and try to build trust before you do shit that could get you bit. Online - people face no repercussions and will escalate because no consequences.<p>Tbh - if there were consequences then people wouldn’t say shit as much. Some people here will point out FB&#x2F;Twitter comments but I really want you to think about that - are there really any significant consequences except for celebs? For most people - their shit isn’t read and no one is going to read what they said in the past. If you change that dynamic - people will change their behavior online. If it becomes clear how many times Jim said the n-word negatively towards some folks online - he’d be socially outcasted and a loner for life. But most people just don’t know… thus Jim does not suffer and does whatever he pleases without issue.<p>I’ve seen this in forums with many real names attached. If you’re not going to see or be affected by someone - you just don’t give af because why should you? Being nice to your common man that you don’t know? What am I, a good person? No! Also - niceness isn’t rewarded on the Internet very often due to the prolific amount of trolls living in BFE with nothing better to do. (Know many of these people. People forget how boring most of the US is. We don’t all live in major cities with great attractions)

An online environment can tolerate a bit more conflict than in person. There&#x27;s actually more time and opportunity to really talk, you can go find a group of people with X interest readily in a way you can&#x27;t do in person and it&#x27;s somewhat safer to be opinionated and yadda.<p>In person, it&#x27;s hard to arrange, say, a local amateur astronomer group and have meetings once a week or once a month with telescopes someplace dark. Online, you can talk about astronomy with others who are interested and share links, tips, trade anecdotes, etc. any time of the day or night.<p>It&#x27;s a completely different social environment and this significantly impacts how people interact, thus it impacts individual behavior either in real terms or perceived terms.

I think you&#x27;d be surprised. Try asking questions that are deeper and you&#x27;ll get deeper conversations. I hate small-talk, and every conversation in real life tends to be deeper than one online. I find more people online simply wanting to point out how wrong the other person is. Hell, I do it too.<p>I think the most interesting comparison I&#x27;ve had is knowing of someone&#x27;s reddit username and how they acted in real life. They were significantly different. The person in real life was kind, thoughtful, patient. Their reddit account however was filled with hate, know it all, and eager to argue.<p>I think the old saying of an individual is a different person at work&#x2F;home&#x2F;play may also extend to online too.

You have been intensely socialized to behave like a robot in person. To wear a mask and not do anything that stands out.<p>People expect this, so doing anything &quot;off script&quot; around other people makes them EXTREMELY uncomfortable. If they are strangers, they usually &quot;filter you out&quot;, pretend they don&#x27;t notice, and create distance. If they are associated with you, they will immediately begin pressuring you to stop in increasingly less subtle ways.<p>Everything about our social interactions is completely scripted. We are choosing between pre-approved scripts that we learned movies and shows. In our public behavior, we are literally just executing software that has been uploaded to our brains.<p>You mostly don&#x27;t notice this because that&#x27;s all you&#x27;ve ever known. However, if you deliberately force yourself outside the script YOU WILL NOTICE, and you will notice very, very intensely.<p>As a consequence, most of the &quot;interesting&quot; people that you meet in real life are hiding, taking on the same exterior behaviors as everyone else.

To quote a great pugilist who recently laid his hands on someone outside of the ring (and not for the first time), I think the answer is really simple:<p>&quot;Social media made y&#x27;all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.&quot;

HN is only a positive place if you agree (and see things the same way as) the current tide of active users. The good thing about HN is that they usually come and go.<p>IMO, seeking &quot;harmony&quot; sounds like a logical reaction to the toxic political activism we&#x27;ve experienced across the spectrum in the past decade. I find myself doing this too; why would I want to expend the emotional labor to convince people of things that matter to me? It doesn&#x27;t benefit me in any way, and cathartic things like shaming aren&#x27;t really healthy.

One factor is the time of day. When I meet people I&#x27;m usually busy with work, my thoughts or trying to achieve something else than a good discussion. When I&#x27;m online I&#x27;m alone, often in the evening, I have plenty of time and space in my head to get interested in arguments, viewpoints, and the experiences of random people I don&#x27;t know.<p>I can also use my time effectively online: thanks to the asynchronous element of internet discussions I can find topics and arguments as I please and I can also withdraw from a discussion if I see the thread is going in a direction that won&#x27;t be interesting. When talking with someone it&#x27;s much harder. Thus, IRL, good discussions tend to happen with good friends who I can trust to not waste my time, and during specifically allotted time slots when I&#x27;m meeting them, and we both also have to be in the mood for a serious conversation.

Online, you only see people with strong opinions, that actively decide to take part in the discussion. You don’t see the people silently scrolling by the comments. In real life (in Most Social situations), people are physically near and feel obliged to talk to others, even if they don’t really want to.

I think many things but I&#x27;d say speed of conversation is a big one. On the internet, I think we give people more time to respond than in person. An email, a few days. A HN post, a few minutes to hours. A text message, a few minutes to a few hours. In person? Often a few seconds at most. (Maybe on phone or video call as well)<p>I think the immediacy can make it scarier for many of us to respond.

Introduce different scenarios to get unpredictable results from people whom you may easily have prejudged as mature, critical, or patient (to use some of your own words) such as:<p>road rage<p>committee membership<p>sports parenting<p>online activity

&gt; What&#x27;s your experience with people online vs in real life?<p>I&#x27;ve seen my fair share of &#x27;Keyboard Warriors&#x27;[0] over the years. For some reason people feel more empowered once there&#x27;s a keyboard there, because hey, computers are cool, let&#x27;s ride that wave.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urbandictionary.com&#x2F;define.php?term=Keyboard%20Warrior" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urbandictionary.com&#x2F;define.php?term=Keyboard%20W...</a>

I don&#x27;t understand why comments so far are talking about people online being inconsiderate. I&#x27;m talking about the opposite. Was my post unclear?

I’ve found that a lot of people cannot handle reality. They’ve cultivated this bubble of positivity around them. Anything that would pierce that bubble, however minor, is met with extreme anxiety and in some cases violent behavior. This isn’t universal but very common among millennials and Gen Z.

Many reasons<p>- I&#x27;ve observed that people in real life seem overly concerned about keeping things &quot;harmonious&quot;<p>In real life, leaving is not just closing a browser tab. When you are stuck with people, you try not to make it a bad time for you and the others.<p>- They also seem to lack patience in various things<p>Same reason, it is harder to ignore people in real life<p>- In contrast people online seem so much more generous<p>People online are often in front of a larger audience, your post can be seen by dozens of people, and you want to project a positive image. Also, online, you only show what you want to show, maybe you just took the seat from an old lady on the bus, but no one is there to see it.<p>Online, people are different, I am different, you are different. It is simply a too different situation for people to be the same.

Most people are often busy, and tired, work, cook, clean, tidy, pension, legal stuff, health stuff, car stuff, children, pay mortgage, pay bills, family, friends, personal activities, problems... Life is complicated and bureaucratic, so not everyone has time to &quot;examine serious things&quot;<p>Then there are channels to discuss things<p>Your family will prefer to hear about job, children, partner, dreams, personal activities, achievements... and not about if invading Ukraine, Syria, Iraq... was a smart decision<p>But there are meetups, for example, where people want to discuss certain subjects, and are prepared to, I wouldn&#x27;t want to discuss programming with most of my friends<p>&gt; But what else is there? What&#x27;s your experience with people online vs in real life? Why do you think this is the case?<p>People are different everywhere, work, home, family gatherings, alone, with friends, partner...<p>And online is the same, from real life, and on different websites<p>Being pseudo anonymous also help you to talk about something that otherwise you would only discuss with a person privately, or not at all, about yourself, or generally controversial<p>I might not share political stuff on Facebook, to avoid alienate friends that will get annoyed without context or proper discussion, a connection that was made to share mostly personal stuff, not politics. But I can go &#x27;all in&#x27; on Reddit or Twitter or other proper channel to discuss those subjects, since I don&#x27;t care about each person personal feelings and emotions since I don&#x27;t know them, and either way I am just trying to get specific point across, weather I am right or wrong<p>If you tell your boss all your personal opinions you will probably be fired soon, or your work might be judged on personal grounds rather than professional, possibly creating a discriminatory environment<p>In conclusion, everyone disagrees about most things, so avoiding conflict is necessary for a healthy life. You should discuss things with people that want to hear from you about it, are prepared to handle it and give you something in return

The experience of communicating online is a very impersonal one: I type what I want to say in a square box and off it goes. I can’t hurt the feelings of my audience if I can’t even comprehend who that audience will be.<p>There’s also the anonymity aspect in some venues, which further removes behavioral barriers. If I can’t be blamed&#x2F;identified in real life then the consequences of my online speech are null and there’s no incentive to not troll or “talk my real feelings out”.<p>Basically we all have a “dark” side: opinions, prejudices, and ideas that are deeply repressed by our need to conform in society. Online there’s no need to conform to anything.

People in the real world want to form personal connections; geeks think communication is about information exchange, but that&#x27;s not it (usually). We are social animals, we need each other, we all greatly desire human connection.<p>People in the real world aren&#x27;t exchanging information or socially entertaining themselves in whatever way we do online - what are we doing online? It&#x27;s not about personal connections in any real sense. It&#x27;s not about exchanging information - it&#x27;s mostly infotainment.<p>What are we doing? Is there anything comparable in humanity pre-Internet?

I know some people who are absolutely harmless in person but absolute a*holes online. You often have to picture them to understand the animosity online. And this is not just in 1-1 situation, it can be in large community posts.<p>If you met them in person, you realise they&#x27;re physically completely harmless, you could even classify them as &#x27;weak&#x27;. This visual &#x2F; physical context is everything that is lost in online communications. One perceives someone as a threat using a vector of things: online, we lose most of that frame of reference.<p>One overlooked element is that, online, people lack of empathy and understanding for their audience. Part of communicating effectively is your ability to see yourself through the shoes of your audience. Online, this is lost since you can&#x27;t picture your audience, so you have to act like it&#x27;s the lowest denominator; and explain yourself really clearly and politely in order to pass a clear message (being well understood).<p>Most people, especially younger people I find, completely lack the social skills of writing online to strangers. Not only they&#x27;re unable to picture their audience or put themselves in the eyes of the reader, but they seem to not give a flying rat about it in the first place, leading to two very different persona: in-person, shy, quiet, reserved, and online, loud, insensitive, inconsiderate belligerent idiot.

I agree with you that a given person typically has a different personality online vs. offline.<p>However, I disagree with you that people are more &quot;kumbya&quot; in person than online.<p>My experience has been people are much more aggressive and mean in person. People are constantly shit-talking, passing undue judgment, road raging complete strangers. It&#x27;s absolutely terrifying.<p>Online, I still feel there is ugliness, but I tend to find people will put together clear and reasonable arguments. Especially in communities like this one.

People who comment or make content online represent a very small minority - maybe a few percentage depending on the platform. That is decidedly not a representative sample.

I think there are two opposing differences.<p>For bravery and boldness:<p>Online, you can dip out of a conversation any time you want, so you can make bold claims and back out of defending them when you start losing. You can also sneak away, quickly look things up, refine your argument and return with everyone else having no idea that you started off talking complete bullshit. In real life, to do that you have to actually call an Uber. Whatever conversational mess you got unto, you have to sit in.<p>For aggression:<p>I think people are generally <i>nicer online</i> (although our perceptions of that are skewed by very stupid twitter replypersons), when they are posting in a community they want to continue to post on (and are reasonably bright.) In real life they are also nice when speaking to strangers or mild acquaintances. In both cases it is because all people know of you is what you&#x27;re saying, so you don&#x27;t want to scare them off. For friends and loved ones, however, you can argue abstractions much more aggressively because they know that you love them and that the subject is irrelevant to that.<p>So online people are bolder because they have escape hatches, but less aggressive because they want to impress. Offline people are more timid because they have to stand by what they say, but more aggressive with people they have real relationships with because they can rely on those to put that aggression into context.<p>At parties with people who aren&#x27;t close, you get the worst of both worlds. People afraid to be bold and people afraid to offend. [edit: that&#x27;s what alcohol is for, though.]

It is not easy to see the humanity of someone over the internet. In real life, we realize that &#x27;others&#x27; are just like us and that the differences are minuscule.

Being anonymous make it easier for people to express their &quot;true self&quot;, and there&#x27;s more empathy when you actually see people you&#x27;re talking with.

In real life you see a real human&#x27;s body language and can see if you are upsetting them by being critical, which may make you uncomfortable and cause you to hold back.<p>On the Internet I can bash anyone on any topic without obvious indicators that there is a real human being on the other end of the conversation that I may be hurting.<p>Also this community tends to attract contrarians who believe they know better that the majority of people on many topics, for better or worse.

Text is such a low-bandwidth human-to-human interaction format, compared with f2f.<p>I find, for example, that folks sometimes &#x27;read into&#x27; what I write -- something that I, in fact, did not write -- in order to bolster their own arguments. This is a form of attacking the Straw Man, and I think the low-bandwidth text format is the reason for this sort of projection.

Firstly, online communities are usually less comparable to all of your IRL social surroundings, and more comparable to special-interest conferences, festivals, or other places where many somewhat more like-minded people with a shared context meet. There&#x27;s definitely <i>a lot</i> of self-selection going on here.<p>Secondly, I believe there&#x27;s a flipside to many of the things that can go wrong when interacting online. Maybe if you read something without knowing the other person, and without having a ten-year history with them, and you can re-read and take time to ponder your answer, it also allows you to be more thoughtful and not let all the baggage people have with each other in the way?

In the <i>real</i> world, there is always a low level threat of violence that keeps people in check. People get bolder as the threat of violence approaches zero.<p>In the civilized world, men will not be so quick to argue fiercely with other men as the probability of a violent outcome is higher. Contrast with women, who will often verbally assault without limit, simply because they enjoy the benefits of the fact that it is not as socially acceptable for a man to pound their face in, and because other women are not as likely to resort to violence.<p>It is ironic that the threat of violence is necessary to keep society peaceful and civilized in a scalable way.

In real life you fear offending people you already know. For example I personally hate [insert company here] for multiple reasons, but I&#x27;m not going to express that in person in front of a friend or acquaintance I know who works there because it&#x27;s likely irrelevant to the context under which I made a connection with that person.<p>There are routinely two groups of people I can speak total truth to, and those are (a) total strangers, and (b) very close friends. Online forums fall in the former category, as do random people who chat me up on trains that I know I will never see again.<p>Anything in-between requires some tiptoeing here and there.

I think overly confrontational people gets isolated sooner or later. There are certain times and places to talk more serious or pungent themes… like parties or sharing a beers or whatever, but not every single time you meet.

To answer this scientifically, you would need to observe the same sample of people both offline and online. If you compare conversations with people you work with or chose to socialize with to conversations between random strangers on the internet, you have a pretty clear difference between your experimental and control groups.<p>People communicating in person to tend to be more likely to avoid conflict and insults. (I think this is because it&#x27;s easier to walk away from an online conversation, while you&#x27;re stuck with someone in physical space). But in my experience, a jerk is a jerk. Online or offline.

Real time vs taking the time to think and form an argument perhaps has an effect?

My wife tells me that I&#x27;m <i>exactly</i> the same, on the Internet, as I am in real life.<p>Maybe not such a good thing, as not everybody loves me, around these parts...<p>But the good news is, I piss off just as many people IRL, as I do, here.

I think there’s significant sampling bias at play.<p>When you’re talking with someone in person, it’s probably because of some relationship you have to them (neighbors, friends, school or work relationships).<p>Online interactions are much more self-selecting, meaning I’d expect people in those conversations to be more passionate about the topic(s).<p>If someone is disinterested in a topic in real life, you get an obvious signal of their disinterest. If someone is disinterested online, they dematerialize and are replaced by an online NPC who is, on average, quite a bit more interested than the typical person.

I think one point being overlooked is that often it&#x27;s harder to have deeper&#x2F;more critical conversation irl without preparation since you don&#x27;t really have much time between thinking and speaking, so it&#x27;s easier to just go with the flow. On the other hand, in online discussion, it&#x27;s possible to take time to think before speaking.<p>So irl I will often realize hours after a conversation that I would have disagreed with something, at which point responding likely doesn&#x27;t make sense, whereas responding a few hours later is pretty normal online.

I think it&#x27;s because of an ill-perception about what online forums are. They are not meant to be like real life, they are places for debate. When people debate they take stances that don&#x27;t necessarily match their beliefs, and that&#x27;s normal. Every online conversation is derailed because people let their emotions take over instead of remaining detached and treating it as a game. And while people can disagree impolitely, once they stand up from the table they are not going to kill each other.

I suspect that to some degree people in real life are filtering or constraining their behavior and speech. Facades of one type or another are presented to others. Being excluded from the “group” is something humans have long evolved mechanisms to avoid.<p>Online these limitations often fall away resulting in displays of ugliness (and occasionally vulnerability) that are the real person behind the facade, unconstrained with the need to form a relationship with some internet being or group.

The people in my real life are not like you describe and they&#x27;re much more intelligent than most HN goers. I use HN and other sources for volume on-demand, not quality. i.e. I get a higher quality of discussion out of my friends, but I can&#x27;t drop-in to one of those 3 minutes before my next meeting (or, like now, while I&#x27;m waiting for my parents in the Whole Foods parking lot).<p>This is actually my biggest reason why I like cities: friends like these are all close by.

Anonymity allows you to be freed from your inhibitions. If statements in real life were made as callously then people might fear for their employment, housing situation, family issue, schools, etc., being impacted in some manners. Those enforce boundaries that your inhibitions generally restrain you from breaking. As you get older then you are less restrained due to lack of boundaries. 2 cents.

Topics of conversation are usually different in real life. They are mundane and rarely controversial.<p>Online conversation topics frequently lead to heated opinions.

It isn&#x27;t about the threat of physical violence, I think it has to do with replying to a broader sense that exists out there while in person you first have to build up that sense with the person you&#x27;re talking to and this takes more effort and time and so necessitates different behaviours. Text is imo the main factor, if we switch to audio people behave more like in real life.

I&#x27;ve found exactly the <i>opposite</i> of your hypothesis - pretty much everyone I interact with online is (withing some small margin of error) identical in person<p>The difference, I&#x27;ve seen (and personally undergo) online vs IRL is that I have time to source and reword statements that aren&#x27;t inherent in &quot;real-time&quot; voice communication

In an online discussion it&#x27;s easy for me to voice my opinion, and deal with the consequences. People are idiots, but I don&#x27;t need to let it affect me online.<p>If I voice my opinion in real life, and I&#x27;m with the wrong person, the situation can go South really quickly. So I shut up and be non-political IRL.<p>PS: I&#x27;m saying this as a progressive leftist, as well.

It&#x27;s because the disincentives aren&#x27;t the same. This is a stupid question, but I&#x27;d never say that to your face :)

HN is the only community in the world where you will receive positive reinforcement for being disagreeable and contrarian. That&#x27;s partly because we have a high diversity here, and a norm again downvoting to express disagreement - which means there will almost always be someone around to upvote a well-researched comment.

fear &#x2F; insecurities makes people different imo. not sure which environment is the one with more or less because the workings are quite complex. people irl can behave crappy due to insecurities, but lack of fear or reprecussions makes people act mean online. insecurities might make people want to look bigger online too while they might make people more timid (not in all cases?) offline.<p>i know people who are generally grumpy and mean irl who are really happy and friendly on their online time, and vice versa. dont think its one way or the other, as people process emotions and stuff differently. there might be generalizations you can make or feel you observe, but imo they break down into these contradictions when looking at unique individuals. perhaps a psychologist has a better answer...

There is a real world consequence if people in person act like how they act online. Anonymity makes people act like monkeys since there is no consequence. There are still people who use their real names online and act like morons but they are a minority and have low IQ.

signals. When communicating in real life i&#x27;m inundated by other signals... body language, perceived status, intelligents, gender etc.<p>Online, I&#x27;m arguing&#x2F;conversing&#x2F;telling jokes with text. there is very little other signal getting in the way. also a large degree of online conversation happens with the voice in my head. My output comes from essentially arguing with myself.<p>My witt it&#x27;s mostly sarcy, with heavy play on words. Because thats whats its like inside my head.<p>My arguing a point will be transactional and I try to be logical but my love of Monty Python influences my out put fairly heavily.<p>etc etc. its about signal to noise, but not just for the <i>amount</i> of signal, but how the noise changes the pitch and perceived value of the signal.

I think there&#x27;s definitely self-selection, the anonymity effect, and the fact that when people say things online they&#x27;re usually in a safe place and have time to ruminate.<p>Mostly you just need to catch certain people at the right time to have those kinds of discussions.

When I post to HN, I&#x27;m <i>not</i> talking, not chatting. I&#x27;m posting. Creating a constructed statement to add to a focused discussion. If we chatted, I&#x27;m sure it would be a substantially different experience. Also, IRL, I&#x27;m not a Capitalist.

They don&#x27;t trust you enough to tell you what they really think. Here on HN you get a downvote. IRL, the &quot;downvoter&quot; may get really vindictive, and if you aren&#x27;t out of his reach, socially and physically, expect some real repercussions.

Comments on HN or Reddit or many other sites with voting tend to be critical. If you agree, you’d upvote. Commenting “this” or “so true” isn’t useful, and doesn’t happen as much as people going “this is totally wrong”. Just selection bias.

&gt; people in real life seem <i>overly</i> concerned about keeping things &quot;harmonious&quot;<p>“Overly” concerned… most people I’ve met that think harmonious social interactions are unnecessary ended up actually just being assholes, jerks, or weirdos.

I call bias and filtering on your side.<p>Online, people behave far more awful than IRL. Probably you filter this by labeling it as trolling or immature, or by selection. People IRL are more focused on &quot;harmonizing&quot;, because there is usually a more direct consequence for bad behavior. In the worst case, it&#x27;s souring your relationship with people you need to live with, which most people simply don&#x27;t want. But this is not a bad thing, because being too critical can be very toxic and harmful. IRL people are more focused on stability than letting the world burn, because they don&#x27;t need to experience the consequences. This on the other side has the strange effect of hyperfocused attention and opinions. People are more limited to their own filter-bubble, being very uncritical of their own bubble, but hypercritical of everything outside.

People in real life socialize for various reasons. For company, for dating, for connections, for future invitations. Deep discussions are not really conducive to any of those goals, especially in mixed company.

IRL you are in real physical danger of being physically attacked for offending someone&#x27;s sensibilities. It&#x27;s no wonder that people prefer to err on the side of caution if nothing else is at stake.

Anonymity often brings out the worst in some people.<p>In the middle of that mud we can also find honest feedback, often unfiltered and not-sugar coated.<p>IRL people are often too overly concerned about too many things that don&#x27;t matter.

Because the internet is async, people have time to think and&#x2F;or choose to be on communities to discuss issues. &quot;Real people&quot; actually have other things to do when you try to engage them.

In real life you have to work with what you&#x27;ve got and act friendly with everyone. On the internet, I can let my real self go and find people I actually like and see a future with.

Do you actually feel that there is more &quot;real listening&quot; happening online?<p>On line anonymity allows every one to act like that one dad on the sideline of his kids game cursing out the refs.

As kids, we learn and mirror behavior of our parents. Over internet we don&#x27;t see our parents&#x27; behavior, so we start mirroring whatever the average behavior is used.

&gt; &quot;<i>I&#x27;ve actually observed that people in real life seem so much more complacent and uncritical compared to people online.</i>&quot;<p>Well, &quot;Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;slatestarcodex&#x2F;comments&#x2F;9rvroo&#x2F;most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;slatestarcodex&#x2F;comments&#x2F;9rvroo&#x2F;most...</a> The more polite summmary at the end is: &quot;If you consume any content on the Internet, you&#x27;re mostly consuming content created by people who for some reason spend most of their time and energy creating content on the Internet. And those people clearly differ from the general population in important ways.&quot;

I read somewhere that “give people a mask and they would reveal their true self” and seems to answer my most of the questions when I find some online forum very toxic.

In real life, there are things we are told not to talk about in polite company - money, religion and politics. Besides that, “over sharing” makes people uncomfortable.

The internet in a channel into peoples&#x27; unconsciousness. That&#x27;s why they talk this way.<p>Like talking to somebody who&#x27;s talking in sleep.<p>Reading&#x2F;browsing is a kind of trance.

I think dishonesty is a lot easier to detect online, so manipulative behaviour gets crowd-regulated quicker. Which, IMO, is good. Hacker News does it too.

the incentives are different online vs. irl.<p>very few folks are comfortable being the [nerd, asshole, dweeb, etc] in real life. being labeled as not nice, will exclude you from social activity.<p>when people go out, they just want to relax and being critical is hard work, plus many of them know they are bad, so they shy away from it.<p>online your words is all you have, so you have to rep yourself harder to stand out.<p>in the real world, your looks can get you far in both directions.

Most people are familiar with the internet dialogue as you described and don’t want to get into arguments with highly opinionated people…

The way I see it: You are different people on different media. The environment and participants might also change you like day an night.

&gt; Maybe there&#x27;s a sample bias because of the online communities I visit (like HN)<p>Boy, are you in for a surprise. HN is often an echo chamber.

“Social media made y&#x27;all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it,” Mike Tyson.<p>The &quot;punch&quot; here is metaphorical and could be any stakes that the person would be at risk of losing: social etc.

Cultures differ.<p>There are some cultures where direct communication and quickly exposing conflict is normal. It seems to me that they consider it impolite to waste people&#x27;s time by hiding conflict. I have personally experienced this from German and Dutch people, and I believe it&#x27;s also the norm in Scandinavian and Icelandic countries.<p>If you&#x27;re experiencing a huge skew between places like Hacker News and &quot;real life&quot;, I guess you might live in North America.<p>However, this isn&#x27;t to say that indirect communication is useless. North America is odd because there&#x27;s a tradition of valuing democratic free speech even when it&#x27;s upsetting. But personal manners have become increasingly indirect - to preserve harmony, to avoid premature judgment of differing experiences, to preserve pride, to provide space for enthusiasm. These aren&#x27;t always bad things either.<p>So, I would say, for North America in 2022, harmonious small talk isn&#x27;t exactly useless - it&#x27;s how you slowly gain the credibility to say more substantial things. An Oklahoman educator I follow online, who has remarkable success engaging right-wing and rural Americans to discuss science, said &quot;Nobody cares that you know until they know that you care&quot;. This might be especially true for the North American mode.

Because we are not yet invented an ability to punch people in the face over standard TCP&#x2F;IP.

It&#x27;s not quite true in my observation. Many RL people are much more aggressive. Many are less.<p>I think people portray themselves differently in different contexts. Everyone is a caricature, but which side they emphasize depends on who&#x27;s watching. Someone might be a skirt chaser among college friends, a board game freak on Instagram, and a virtue signaler on LinkedIn. It&#x27;s still the same person, with the same opinions.<p>The other side of the coin is algorithms. I like chess memes and basically the internet will highlight all of my friends who are into chess memes. When I&#x27;m angry at anti-vaxxers, suddenly everyone else is. Whenever I complain about the drop in KFC quality, I find that everyone I know is just <i>furious</i> about KFC.<p>It&#x27;s why I stopped using FB and Twitter; it&#x27;s basically a warped mirror. Plus the algorithms encourage being a caricature. It&#x27;s the PewDiePie effect - the difference between a gamer and a millionaire celebrity gamer is that the celebrity is always hyperactive and screaming at stuff. There&#x27;s also a kind of tribal effect in play.

In my day we used to ask why people are so different online than in real life...

it&#x27;s not strange at all. We are different when we are in different environments.<p>It is obviously online is different from offline. Usually, online brings our inner character out.<p>If you learn Buddhist, this is very easy to understand.

See this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;knowyourmeme.com&#x2F;memes&#x2F;greater-internet-fuckwad-theory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;knowyourmeme.com&#x2F;memes&#x2F;greater-internet-fuckwad-theo...</a><p>&gt; <i>The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (GIFT) is a postulate which asserts that normal, well-adjusted people may display psychopathic or antisocial behaviors when given both anonymity and a captive audience on the Internet</i><p>Also there is spell-check and programs that correct your grammar, so people seem well read and articulate but it&#x27;s things like Grammarly that are making them seem &#x27;Highbrow&#x27;.<p>Worth noting that most communication is done <i>asynchronously</i> meaning people have loads of time to articulate their feelings and post perfect replies, whereas in real life we have a short real-time window to articulate our thoughts.

Man in real life I might get punched. Better behave myself.

You can&#x27;t get punched in the mouth on the internet.

&quot;The nail that sticks up gets hammered down&quot;.

It&#x27;s obvious. IRL, you could be beaten up.

Opening my mouth takes more effort than typing.

Consequences.

People are the same. I believe the confusion here is thinking that the things we type and the things we say and act in person have the same meanings, both internally and socially.<p>Long discussion goes here, but human language is a socially-contextual performance art which has roots in the creation and teaching of the construction of tools. Vagueness, non-verbal messaging, social signaling, and all of the other aspects of language are built in order to transfer that tool knowledge with the minimum amount of effort. To be even further reductionist, you don&#x27;t have to make that spear out of the exact same rock I used as long as you get a point on the end of a sufficiently long stick. Language&#x27;s inability to be precise and have millions of shades of meaning based on other things besides words is a feature, not a bug. It&#x27;s an evolutionary survival trait, probably needed by any sentient creatures.<p>Contrast that to what we&#x27;re doing now on HN: typing messages back and forth. That is not the use of human language, at least not as we understand it today. Printed text is not language. Symbolic representation of sounds has a singular, yet fundamentally different goal: the unambiguous transfer of knowledge. The closer that knowledge that we want to transfer is to the human experience, the worse printed text works for that purpose. This is why fiction can be a 12-part novel while a chemistry formula might take up one page.<p>So when we see text messages flying back-and-forth, it engages a different part of our brain. Continuing my simplification, when we view and interact with text, we&#x27;re really looking to play some advanced video game where the correct text and replies &quot;proves&quot; an exact version of the world that others might not share. This is why so many online arguments end up end semantic wordplay games. It&#x27;s not that people are petty, it&#x27;s that we&#x27;re trying to take that hominid brain system and bolt it into a logical, mathematical framework. Tech folks commonly say something like &quot;If a implies b, and b implies c, then a implies c&quot; Unless you use a set theory definition of a,b, and c, this can be shown to fail rather easily. [1]<p>tl;dr, when I type the word &quot;dog&quot;, think of a dog, and have a conversation with my grandmother about her dog, although we want to think of the word as being the exact same thing in all three contexts, it is not. It just appears that way. That&#x27;s why you think people are acting so differently. They&#x27;re not. It&#x27;s just different things are going on in different social&#x2F;physical contexts without our realizing it.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Syllogism#Syllogistic_fallacies" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Syllogism#Syllogistic_fallacie...</a>

It may just depend on where you live. From what ive noticed, most people have a clique and stick to it. If youre not part of their group, then you will probably never have a clue they exist. whereas online, the line between cliques are scewed, so it bleeds through.