Re. Meat space vs. meet space

Recently Degrowther wrote:

... I’m starting to recognize that my tolerance for “different views and opinions”, in general, scales with proximity.

My personal experience has been that my patience and tolerance to things I find annoying diminish when I'm not talking face to face with the other person. Getting interrupted from work by a colleague walking up to my desk: it's fine, I'll likely be glad to help. Getting interrupted from work by a chat message: instant anger and “Why didn't they search online for this before pestering me?” thoughts. And it's not just chats that cause this, although they do so more often to me. I've noticed the same thing even with video calls, which one could argue shouldn't be an issue since you're seeing and talking to the other person live. So for me it's not just about views and opinions, it extends to human interactions in general.

It seems that there's something in my monkey brain that doesn't recognize the other person as fully real unless I can see them right then and there. It's not like I can't have any empathy in a virtual space, it's just that it's more difficult to gather while at the same time the effect of annoyances is multiplied. Maybe this is a human trait/feature/bug, given the amount of arguing and fighting that's been happening over the internet since its early days.

Why am I writing this in a virtual space then, you may ask. I don't get the same lack of patience when browsing the smol web. Maybe it's the fact that I browse it only when I choose to instead of being interrupted. Or that I don't have to browse it, compared to having to reply to colleagues. All I know is that the smol web feels like a pleasant virtual space to be in and to browse.

Sotiris 2025-10-05