I know some super-edgy far-leftists who are kind of assholes online but are the sweetest people in person. In person they’re willing to show more compassion, discuss more nuanced details, and express more uncertainty–while online, they easily get pulled into macho woker-than-thou posturing. I imagine a lot of the people responsible for Bad SJ Discourse are kind of like that.

A lot of internet people who are jerks and upset me are probably people I’d like if I talked with them in person. This does NOT justify this sort of online behavior. But thinking about it this way helps me find it less upsetting.

Sometimes the person is an asshole whose real self comes out only online. But some people are also really nice, and their real self gets masked online. And of course, in some ways, the in-person self and the online self are both the real self (as well as a masked self)–and it is an entity whose quality is very mixed.