There's also the fact that when you're online there's a zero risk of being punched in the face when you say something the other person is likely to find unpleasant.
It goes from "I'm talking to a person" to "I'm responding to brabel". In a physical conversation it's impossible to achieve the same level of "dehumanization" because you're staring at the person.
That's my Sunday couch quarterback explanation.
More like you are responding to a graffiti he has left on this website. Just like people draw (often stupid) messages on the walls of public toilets.
Reading online is like reading in a book: You can learn a lot, on topics where you’d need to travel 1000km to find the first expert.
Unfortunately, writing online isn’t made with the same dedication as writing a book: We don’t spend time collecting proof and links and quotes and performing regressions and meta-analysis before presenting our results. But HN rules entice people to do that, and people doing it was the strength of HN until ~2010.
If that’s what one calls depersonification, I’d argue that an engineering book is very depersonated too, and it’s its strength. No emotions, just raw information all the time.
It's hard to stare into someone else's eyes and feel... nothing.
It's pretty easy to look at text on the screen and forget the person on the other end is like you.