Originally Posted by
Echeyakee
Care to provide an argument, instead of a baseless blank statement? Online is not real life, it's simply a fact. That is, unless you're famous or stupid enough to dox yourself. At the very least the dynamic of conversation is altered, depending on the medium.
Text in general makes for a entirely different style, much slower, with opportunity to properly think and express yourself. Not many take that option, but it's a different topic in itself. You also have some much less instinctive ways to determine hidden meaning/emotions. For example many people can't understand sarcasm well orally, and are completely dense to it in text. So you need to rely on written hints (from something as blunt as /s to simply paying attention to changes in punctuation and capitalization) or simply guess by the overall tone. This makes written communication online stiffer and shallower than any in-person conversation.
Forums, like this or reddit and such, are more akin to monologuing at someone for about 5 minutes and then waiting for a reply. It is more like an official debate or a rap battle, than a proper conversation IRL.
Chats like discord or text messages of different variety tend to be livelier, but still suffer from the overall limits of written communication. You do expect an answer much faster, but that usually comes at the (even greater) cost to expression. This is why emotacons are so widely used, since most other ways of written expression (except maybe punctuation at the end of sentences) goes out the window.
VoIP services are a bit different, as they are much closer to IRL conversation, but they still rob you of any visual queues, but that's not something most people can pick up on anyway. As a result people tend to be more reserved, yet open and/or truthful during them. And it tends to follow a more natural path, where initially you put up your usual front, and as you get to know people, you let down some of your walls. Yet there is still the big A...
Anonymity, the biggest difference between IRL and online interactions. And, as a secondary, yet important factor, safety. There is no threat of physical violence, and despite what concerned moms want you to believe, true online bullying is very rare. Most cases are results of involved parties knowing each other IRL, or the bullied person revealing personal information about themselves. The ever present ability to ignore and block unwanted messages or people is highly potent, as well as staff or the resource used, that will almost always assist the target. And in the worst case, it's simply a matter of creating a new account. Purely online bullying is very ineffective and easily dealt with.
So with no threat or any meaningful repercussions, the nature of interaction is different at a fundamental level. Even if you make conscious effort to treat them equally, you will still never be able to do so. There are tons of subconscious triggers, responses and limiters that we employ IRL, that simply do not fire during online interactions.
So, in conclusion, I think your statement is just hot air, as IRL and online interactions are different at their core, meaning it's impossible to treat them equally.