How "real" is the Internet?

[Xantar]

So when people point out that you've misunderstood the point they are trying to make, you immediately start insulting their penises to their face as well? Dude, you've got issues...

Ok, ok, that's too glib. Let me just condense my point. You interact with real people with your body language and your voice in face to face meetings. You interact with people on the internet using words that you type by pushing buttons on a keyboard. The two of them are radically different and they access very different parts of your brain. They are not the same and can never be the same. Humans are just not wired that way. So although you may be approaching the internet with the attitude that you're going to treat everybody the same way you would in real life, the fact of the matter is you can't. You can give it a try, and I'm certainly not going to stop you. But fundamentally, interacting with people over the internet is less immediate and a less comprehensive social experience than face to face contact. And I think anybody who wants to claim that they are just the same and equal is either pretending or fooling themselves.