All good points. One I would add: there is far less assumption of good faith from strangers on Twitter, and most parts of the internet in general. For whatever

All good points. One I would add: there is far less assumption of good faith from strangers on Twitter, and most parts of the internet in general. For whatever reason, in-person interactions have a level of charity in them. You'll clarify misconceptions, give people the chance to make and walk back mistakes, and generally assume that your conversational partner is reasonable until proven otherwise. Twitter is not like this. Many people seem to find it very easy to start a conversation with criticism, looking for evidence of stupidity or malice rather than trying to clarify it away. And there is almost no ground-level assumption that the other person is actually "trying" the way you are. Seems easily traced back to Twitter not being a very human medium. As in the car example, it's easier to strongly dislike something when it's not obviously another human. But of course, the existence of trolls on the internet and mostly nonexistence of tolls in everyday life is a factor too. For this reason, I've mostly given up on having any kind of remotely grey-area discussion on Twitter. I just use it to follow a few dozen people whose thoughts I'm interested in. And outside of HN and email/messaging, I don't talk through the internet at all.