Context is everything, though. On hubski I'm surrounded by intelligence; I'm therefore more inclined to argue, because turning someone on hubski's opinion is a whole lot more interesting than attempting to persuade a native goddamn Oklahoman of anything rational. I think most people who know me offline, including my family, would be surprised at how much I care about certain issues, and how developed many of my opinions are. I just don't bother talking to people about those sorts of things -- why bother when most of the intelligent responses are on hubski, etc? It's a sad truth. (There's the additional caveat of anonymity -- I'm not the sort of person you take seriously; I fuck around a lot and get drunk, fall off the furniture, quote Community to begin and end most conversations god help me, and so on. So people see what they expect to see, which is fair and natural.)I currently go out of my way to make sure I don't mistreat others online to a point at which I've actually become nicer as a digital creation than I am in real life.
To a lesser degree I have had that same feeling/process. I'm still pretty harsh in general, but I think not quite as harsh as I am offline, when I bother.