The Dread Slender Gnome on Nostr: I think you probably have a point and that's likely a part of it. There seems to be ...

I think you probably have a point and that's likely a part of it.

There seems to be something about the Internet that removes people's understanding that what someone says to someone else (!) does not affect them. In addition to that, something seems to have changed in that people aren't expected to show resilience in the face of insults anymore.

There used to be this idea around that reacting explosively to insults is immature and childish. Not only does that seem to become very unpopular, anything that could be construed as being emotionally wounding seems to have been promoted into an insult or attack.

It's like paradoxically, the absence of the actual person in one's physical vicinity has made people take words alone excessively seriously.

Maybe also because it actually IS possible to completely shut someone out on the Internet? In real life, if there's someone in one's family or workplace whose ideas one finds insufferable, there's rarely anything one can do about that beyond studiously avoiding the subject. But online it's just a matter of clicking the "block" or "report" button.

So maybe a combination of nurtured emotional fragility and normalisation of censoriousness in reaction to conflicting ideas?

Although weirdly, at the same time people ARE being absolute dicks to each other on the Internet, and that seems to be just a regular old normal thing that everyone does as well.