30 minutes with a stranger

It's the internet. When you talk to people online, it often descends into pettiness. When you talk to people in the real world, that rarely happens. But it's much easier to talk online, so people get the wrong impression.

You should talk to strangers. It's never gone wrong for me. Most people have a warmth and agreeableness that comes out when you are there with them, talking about stuff. There's also the interesting effect that people will give you their innermost secrets, knowing you won't tell anyone (I actually met a serial killer who did this, heh). For instance I was on a long haul flight earlier this year, and my neighbour told me everything about her divorce. Like a kind of therapy.

I also find when I have a real disagreement with someone, it's a lot easier when you're face-to-face. For instance, I have friends who are religious, in a real way, ie they actually think there's a god who created the earth and wants us to live a certain way. Being there in person keeps me from ridiculing them like I might on an internet forum, but it also keeps them from condemning me to hell.

So folks, practice talking to people. Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness, having no outlet for your expressions.

Online, it feels like we're all half-performing for an invisible audience, so the incentives skew toward snark or point-scoring. In person, there's no scoreboard, just two humans trying to get through the moment together

An interesting "control case" is random-chat websites like Omegle. I spent many many hours on that site before it shut down. Omegle pairs you up with a single random stranger, so there's no audience. I typically used it in text-only mode, so there's no face-to-face communication either.

I'd say my experience was closer to the "30 minutes with a stranger" study than it was to modern social media. It was fairly common for a conversation to degrade into insult-trading. But it was more common to have a deep, heartfelt conversation. (Oftentimes I felt like I should follow up with the person I talked to, but I rarely did so in practice, even when we traded contact information.)

Another interesting "control case" is Usenet. You mention the concept of point-scoring. The point-scoring metaphor is rather literal on a website like HN which has upvotes/likes/etc. Usenet didn't have that stuff, but I'm told it had flamewars nonetheless.

Surely some HN users reading this comment are old enough to remember Usenet. Was it better or worse than modern social media in terms of civility? I'm especially curious about Usenet after Eternal September, once small-group norm enforcement broke down, and the underlying characteristics of the platform shone through. If we score early Usenet as 10/10 for civility, and modern X or reddit as 0/10, what score would latter-day, post-AOL Usenet receive?

Another thought: It occurred to me that "point-scoring" could actually be less of an issue with pure-anonymity platforms like 4chan, since you have less of a persona to defend. I've barely used 4chan though, so I can't say much here.