> Look how often people lose patience with each other online.
I think this is largely an issue of scale.
Say you are driving on a single-lane, one-way road, which ends at a T intersection with a stop sign. The other road is also 1-way, 1-lane, and does not have a stop sign. It has a traffic light around 20 car lengths after your road. You are waiting for a chance to turn in; the other road has a fair amount of traffic, but moving slowly since the light was red. A car stops (or moves very slowly) to make room for you to cut in, and waves you on. Very nice for you, and the cars behind you are not inconvenienced much.
In my experience, this kind of thing happens relatively frequently in rural areas, and quite the opposite in cities. For myself, that's largely because in the city there's always a car looking to get in, and if I stopped for them all, I'd never get anywhere.
In person, I am quite patient. Online, still relatively patient I guess, but less so, especially with strangers. There's just so many people who I could be talking to, that if I gave everyone I talked to the same attention that I do irl, I wouldn't have time to do anything else! My impatience translates more into "ghosting" a conversation if the other person isn't getting my point, vs snapping at them, but it's the same cause.
Sometimes I write long (as in time to compose) comments like this one, but that's partially for myself, to verify that my thoughts are logically consistent.
My experience differs with the cars. During my life I have moved from very rural area to always denser places. The denser it gets the more helpful the other drivers are. Dunno why this happens.
IMO New York drivers are the least agreeable and a diverse sprawlscape like LA has all kinds, depending on the neighborhood (looking at you Glendale) so neither stereotype align with reality.
I suspect what the GP thinks of as rural is more exurban or even suburban, though IME they're often just as bad. Rural is when you see a handful of cars on an hour long drive so opinions will vary wildly
I’ve grown up driving in east coast cities and I will say that there is a lot of honking and anger and cutting off of people, but drivers in general are very spatially aware and there are unwritten rules about how to cut in/merge etc. so I’ve never taken any of it personally. It’s all part of the theater. Oddly I feel less comfortable in other regions out west where speeds are higher and people are sticklers for “rules of the road” (IMO feel like “right of way” casts a cloak of invincibility around them). I feel that those drivers don’t see driving for the complex, multi-person game it is and don’t play their part in the game. It’s like their playing in single player mode. I can see though if you’re unfamiliar with either perspective the other seems foreign and wrong. But then again I’m biased (just casting a different perspective on angry NYC/Boston/NE-US drivers)...
I think this is largely an issue of scale.
Say you are driving on a single-lane, one-way road, which ends at a T intersection with a stop sign. The other road is also 1-way, 1-lane, and does not have a stop sign. It has a traffic light around 20 car lengths after your road. You are waiting for a chance to turn in; the other road has a fair amount of traffic, but moving slowly since the light was red. A car stops (or moves very slowly) to make room for you to cut in, and waves you on. Very nice for you, and the cars behind you are not inconvenienced much.
In my experience, this kind of thing happens relatively frequently in rural areas, and quite the opposite in cities. For myself, that's largely because in the city there's always a car looking to get in, and if I stopped for them all, I'd never get anywhere.
In person, I am quite patient. Online, still relatively patient I guess, but less so, especially with strangers. There's just so many people who I could be talking to, that if I gave everyone I talked to the same attention that I do irl, I wouldn't have time to do anything else! My impatience translates more into "ghosting" a conversation if the other person isn't getting my point, vs snapping at them, but it's the same cause.
Sometimes I write long (as in time to compose) comments like this one, but that's partially for myself, to verify that my thoughts are logically consistent.