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

Do you maintain metrics on the ratio of flagged posts or comments to those you take action on? Or categorize why such posts are flagged/removed?

I've only ever heard you say "trust us, we do this," but I can speak from experience that I have personally flagged some posts and comments that end up remaining anyway.

This is, of course, your site and you can moderate it as you please, but the quality of participation has been falling (IMO -- yes, I'm familiar with the guidelines saying not to complain about it) and it's been turning off participants who otherwise would have very wise, informed, and useful things to say.

For example, a distinguished engineer who did a lot of seminal work in performance benchmarking while at Sun and later wrote Linux's original source control system is gone now, dissuaded by the emotional and nonsensical conversations he was getting into here. IMO his opinions and insight are at the 99th percentile of in terms value here, and this site is far worse off for the absence of people like him.

Anyway, I don't want to get into a big debate here; just wanted to give my two cents.

Cultures differ.

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's time by hiding conflict. I have personally experienced this from German and Dutch people, and I believe it's also the norm in Scandinavian and Icelandic countries.

If you're experiencing a huge skew between places like Hacker News and "real life", I guess you might live in North America.

However, this isn't to say that indirect communication is useless. North America is odd because there's a tradition of valuing democratic free speech even when it'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't always bad things either.

So, I would say, for North America in 2022, harmonious small talk isn't exactly useless - it'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 "Nobody cares that you know until they know that you care". This might be especially true for the North American mode.

> become their "true selves" just because of that.

Yeah, because of the danger of a physical altercation, that potential drawback is taken away while interacting online

What's the drawback of making some alt accounts/sockpuppet accounts and going harass someone you dislike? Getting an Ip ban at most I'd gather rather than getting your nose broken by a punch from someone on the street

There is little to no credible deterrence in online discussions

My wife tells me that I'm exactly the same, on the Internet, as I am in real life.

Maybe not such a good thing, as not everybody loves me, around these parts...

But the good news is, I piss off just as many people IRL, as I do, here.

I didn't want to make my post too log with details but one particular family member has a pretty over the top reaction. They'll start yelling and threaten to leave. I learned to never say things like, "you should" or "have you tried" to them. I'm good at not setting them off but my dad often has to stop my mom from giving advice or else this person will freak out.