It's not quite true in my observation. Many RL people are much more aggressive. Many are less. I think people portray themselves differently in different conte

It's not quite true in my observation. Many RL people are much more aggressive. Many are less. I think people portray themselves differently in different contexts. Everyone is a caricature, but which side they emphasize depends on who's watching. Someone might be a skirt chaser among college friends, a board game freak on Instagram, and a virtue signaler on LinkedIn. It's still the same person, with the same opinions. The other side of the coin is algorithms. I like chess memes and basically the internet will highlight all of my friends who are into chess memes. When I'm angry at anti-vaxxers, suddenly everyone else is. Whenever I complain about the drop in KFC quality, I find that everyone I know is just furious about KFC. It's why I stopped using FB and Twitter; it's basically a warped mirror. Plus the algorithms encourage being a caricature. It's the PewDiePie effect - the difference between a gamer and a millionaire celebrity gamer is that the celebrity is always hyperactive and screaming at stuff. There's also a kind of tribal effect in play.