Perception vs reality

True, but these don't apply to work or a work-like environment where you collaborate over long periods of time and get as many "second chances" as you want and where you hope "scams" are rare! Or at least don't last for long.

In fact, spotting unpleasant people is an order magnitude faster in real world interactions, at least in my experience. I mean in average: of course it's not an exact science.

Also, people who see each other at the office _also_ send emails to each other all the time; they work "online" _and_ in writing too and they use the latter constantly; every time they need more time to think and express themselves. It's not mutually exclusive at all, face to face interactions come in addition.

> And that doesn't even take into account all the prejudices...

I'd like to believe you but I've seen way too many accusations of racism and bias online too.

Yes we are all biased, life is not fair and communication is hard and frequently painful. But I really don't think it becomes easier by removing most of it and funnelling it through a very narrow channel. I understand how that may seem more "comfortable" at first and in fact some people do also avoid direct contact at the office too but I've seen that being a short-term and failed bet pretty much every time.

I suspect this has been studied extensively, for instance there are some references at the bottom of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_(Internet) (need to manually enter that link sorry)
(While wikipedia pages are written by "random people on the internet", the bibliography section is often a great starting point)