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Agreed, I have to remember myself that the hugging and kissing and close personal contact that is normal in Spain is considered offensive, sexual approach in no

by pipio21 10y ago

Agreed, I have to remember myself that the hugging and kissing and close personal contact that is normal in Spain is considered offensive, sexual approach in north Europe or USA normally after some awkward situation. This culture disagreements combines with only text communications in which people can't see the body language and tone of voice of others. You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they care on reality. Specially after "text only" communication would require orders of magnitude more effort to express yourself without misunderstandings and most people only have limited time for it. As a result you get an ugly thing.

wolfgke 10y ago
> You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they care on reality. My impression about this is different. My personal hypothesis (which might also be wrong) rather is that the internet is a mouthpiece for people who have strong opinions about some topic (which does not imply that they are wrong here) that few people in the "real world" care about. Since few people in the real world will be interested in this topic, these people often appear as nice people in the "real world", since hardly any discussions about the "heated" topic will accidentally happen there. The same happens if these people discuss about different topics in the internet. The main difference is in the internet there are enough people that care about this exotic topic deeply enough to give contra (whether they have good points or not - at least they have a similar level of opionatedness). This leads to the impression that these people are toxic, etc. TLDR: I believe the difference is not about how you say things in internet vs. real life, but about how you talk about your "opinionated topic" vs. something different both in internet and real life.

by pipio21 10y ago

wolfgke 10y ago

> You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they care on reality. My impression about this is different. My personal hypothesis (which might also be wrong) rather is that the internet is a mouthpiece for people who have strong opinions about some topic (which does not imply that they are wrong here) that few people in the "real world" care about. Since few people in the real world will be interested in this topic, these people often appear as nice people in the "real world", since hardly any discussions about the "heated" topic will accidentally happen there. The same happens if these people discuss about different topics in the internet. The main difference is in the internet there are enough people that care about this exotic topic deeply enough to give contra (whether they have good points or not - at least they have a similar level of opionatedness). This leads to the impression that these people are toxic, etc. TLDR: I believe the difference is not about how you say things in internet vs. real life, but about how you talk about your "opinionated topic" vs. something different both in internet and real life.