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

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

#31

Post by jimkleiber »

I think many things but I'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)

I think the immediacy can make it scarier for many of us to respond.

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

#34

Post by civilized »

On social media, thousands see your post but only a few react. They're the ones that found your post much more interesting than the average person who saw it.

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're the people that, if they'd seen your post on social media, wouldn't have replied at all.

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.

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

#35

Post by rhn_mk1 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #22

Being anonymous make it easier for people to express their "true self", and there's more empathy when you actually see people you're talking with.

You're anonymous on the streets in a big city too, but people don't become their "true selves" just because of that. On the other hand, swathes of the internet are not anonymous, and that doesn't stop immaturity.

I'm not convinced by this argument.

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

#37

Post by whatshisface »

HN is the only community in the world where you will receive positive reinforcement for being disagreeable and contrarian. That'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.

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

#38

Post by zh3 »

I do recall being at a dinner back in the '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'd do if he ever met said person in RL.

At which point, someone else said "That's him sitting over there" pointing to a player on the opposite side of the table. Next thing it was "Wow, really pleased to meet you!".

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't get their points back).

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.

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

#40

Post by lr4444lr »

samh748 wrote: post #18

I don't understand why comments so far are talking about people online being inconsiderate. I'm talking about the opposite. Was my post unclear?

It's the same root cause, I think: offline, you have much more context, plus intonation and body language, which lead to the expectation that you will be better understood. Online, it's hard to forget this is absent if you are not careful. The results can go either way.
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