It's obvious. IRL, you could be beaten up.
Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
231–240 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many do you think read this reply? At least that many, I'd wager.
that is actually an interesting question. it would be nice to see some statistics of how many people viewed the discussions, like the number of comments and upvotes. maybe dang could give us an idea about the average number of views related to number of comments and votes. is it 10 to one? 100 to 1? is it a similar factor for most stories? actually, i don't think it's linear because higher upvoted stories have a high…
Perhaps related - The 1% Rule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule?wprov=sfla1
> In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a general rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website add content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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 de…
I'd go even farther: what's the drawback of not making some alt accounts and still doing the harassment? There will be no physical altercation. And indeed, this is what happens. Alts are used to evade bans.
Anonymity clearly is not the cause.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
that is actually an interesting question. it would be nice to see some statistics of how many people viewed the discussions, like the number of comments and upvotes. maybe dang could give us an idea about the average number of views related to number of comments and votes. is it 10 to one? 100 to 1? is it a similar factor for most stories? actually, i don't think it's linear because higher upvoted stories have a high…
I feel like that would bias things, but it would be interesting to see once a thread “dies.” It’d even be easy to do just parsing access logs and adding a number in a db. That’d help handle the scale, assuming we are seeing mostly-cached pages here.
i actually wondered about the effect it would have.
good idea to only do it after discussion is closed.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#235On 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 socia…
> On social media, thousands see your post That's either wildly optimistic, or most people spend a lot more time building up their online persona than I do.
I'm a small persona, but for me the order of magnitude is wrong but the sentiment is correct I think. Generally the times I notice I get feedback, it's may be when I get seen by >100 people generally by interacting with popular posts vs. my "mutuals" who are just dozens if that at a time, and it's usually crickets or <5 likes for spicy things. It's definitely selection bias for outspoken / opinionated people who care about a topic.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
that is actually an interesting question. it would be nice to see some statistics of how many people viewed the discussions, like the number of comments and upvotes. maybe dang could give us an idea about the average number of views related to number of comments and votes. is it 10 to one? 100 to 1? is it a similar factor for most stories? actually, i don't think it's linear because higher upvoted stories have a high…
Perhaps related - The 1% Rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule?wprov=sfla1 > In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a general rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website add content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.
It would be nice if this could be quantified...given such a distribution is readily determinable and given websites already collect so much data anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also the fact that when you're online there's a zero risk of being punched in the face when you say something the other person is likely to find unpleasant.
It seems like a lot of internet internet comments think physical violence is a near unthinkable action to respond to non physical violence with and a lot of others think most people are a couple sentence exchange away from getting punched in the face.
I think with a few sentences it is often going to be possible to convince someone to punch you in the face.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suffering a distortion of perspective. From focus, trauma, drugs, obsession...
There’s a huge difference between having a distorted world view because of ignorance or knowledge or whatever and being clinically diagnosed with a mental illness. For example, someone that seems very self involved, a trait of immaturity and youth, isn’t the same as someone with narcissistic personality disorder as defined here: https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/materials/Narc.P...
Never discount the power of long, intense, sustained focus to wreck your perspective.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, however that is not what happens if you just let that behavior described above slide. Punching someone because they said something to you is usually wrong especially if they don't even know each other (so it can't be personal, really).
I've definitely been in a number of situations where what passes for craft and hateful online speech what get someone severely beaten oh, and I don't think that's necessarily A Bad Thing. It's not a solution to the greater problems of society, but a punch to the face or the threat thereof it certainly keeps people from verbally assaulting people in real life. Of course there are problems with people acting as adjudge…
I disagree that physical violence is justified for any anonymous conversation however hateful it might be. If it is not anonymous then there are things like slander where things get more blurry, however I am not a strong proponent of vigilante justice, so I would not call it just either.
Re: Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different?
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like a lot of internet internet comments think physical violence is a near unthinkable action to respond to non physical violence with and a lot of others think most people are a couple sentence exchange away from getting punched in the face.
I think with a few sentences it is often going to be possible to convince someone to punch you in the face.
I know a few people who can easily be pushed to violence but, speaking personally and for most people I know, there's no words for which I would punch someone.