That may have fostered a culture where people don’t see their opponents as people, but a similar phenomenon has been evident online even when everyone shares the same language: being able to hide behind a nickname and an avatar has both enabled people to act like jerks, as well as to see the other party as nothing but pixels and bytes on the internet.
And of course, there could be anyone behind that nickname and avatar, which makes it harder to eyeball the situation where we’re communicating. I don’t know whether you’re a 13-year-old girl trying to act all grown-up, or the Pope. So it’s easier to interpret you just as “imaginary NPC on the internet”.
A question I’ve sometimes asked in online chats is “Would you say something like that to a random passer-by you don’t know if you met them in real life?” The reactions have been interesting.
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