The overarching problem is a lack of empathy. In my decades on this planet, I've seen it over and over again in interpersonal relations under all circumstances,

The overarching problem is a lack of empathy. In my decades on this planet, I've seen it over and over again in interpersonal relations under all circumstances, but nowhere near as often as in the realm of text communication. Humans need face to face contact, because this kind of contact gives you instant feedback about what effect your words and actions are having. It's how most people experience empathy. I'm one of those who is far better at text communication than face to face due to the luxury of being able to carefully consider my words and their effect rather than having to clumsily do that in real time, but a side effect of this is that my every word gets rewritten multiple times as I try to get the overall tone right, and try to head off potential misunderstandings. My success rate isn't super great, but it's far better than my face to face. With most people, the opposite seems to be true. Worse: they seem unaware of text communication's shortcomings in terms of the social and emotional feedback loop - empathy. The most toxic people online are often an absolute delight in person, completely oblivious to the damage they're doing because they're empathetically blinded in the other medium, and unaware of the fact.