perhaps we need a safe word - so if you are getting exasperated and people are taking your joke the wrong way, you just type 'rhubarb' or something.
i think we talk about these things, in an endlessly reductive way, cos we are really talking around other things that we don't want to actually talk about. sometimes the conversation is good and ends with some actual interesting revelation.
other times, people end up boxed into corners they are not even arsed about, just cos of the adversarial nature of the forum and the pile on aspect. and cos they don't wanna say what they actually wanna say, cos then things really could go south, but actually probably won't.
its cos we are not interacting in physical space i think, or at least that's an aspect. this is good and bad tho. so much more freedom, but equally, i'd like it if dissensus was a pub at the end of my road as well.