Why is communicating online so much easier then in person?

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Most here have trouble socializing with others in person. There is post after post describing the ghastly difficulties people have in that regard. If the topic of these posts were not what they are I would not realize these are people who have difficulties communicating. They are detailed, well written, well thought out little sign of stumbling and bumbling. In the Adult section I have written about the most personal topics with little or no embarrassment. We are supposed to be logical, we know behind those words we see there is real person with a face and EYES. Sometimes posters chose to post a picture of themselves but I have no problem replying to them. But come face to face offline and all our logic goes away. Strange

I find it harder to communicate online but I do find it easier to express myself via writing than I do when speaking so its a mixed bag.

Online leaves too much open to interpretation and people twist things as a result.

I have observed the same thing and have an explanation for myself for this: (I don´t know if it applies to others, it´s just based on my own experiences.)
Of course you know that all the other persons here are persons with faces and eyes how you write but you don´t see them. So you don´t have to concentrate on the face and the things you want to say at the same time.
Another point is that you can read the posts, think about it as long as you want to, then think about what you want to reply and then you also have time to write it down as good as you can. But you can´t usually do something like this when you speak to a person face to face because the person expects a quick answer after asking a question and don´t want to wait five minutes or so until you made a perfect answer. So you have to answer quickly and it isn´t as perfect as a written post because you cannot think about it as much as you do while you are writing.

I'm similar to Nightingale121. I'm much better at expressing myself online than in person. Online, I can take as much time as I want. I can read and rewrite it if it doesn't sound correct. But in person, you need to respond very quickly, and don't get as much time to think about what you want to say. I get quite self conscious while talking so I spend more time thinking about what the other person is thinking about me than what I want to say. Also, I find real life conversations tend to quickly skip from topic to topic, and I find it hard to keep up.

I have no trouble expressing myself, by writing or talking, but communications and connections with people take a lot more than the ability to talk or write. I haven't made any close friends in many years. I think part of it is just getting close and personal is (to me) less fun than talking about anything else. I meet someone and we talk. I have no problem talking about our hobbies, experiences, or the news. Once you get to know them really well, the topics switch from gardening, video games, rock collection or whatever fun stuff you both enjoy, to non-fun things like relationship troubles, work troubles, health issues, identity crisis, death, all sorts of other troubles ...etc. It seems I can't get past the "trouble test" and show enough concern to become a friend.

I do agree writing is easier for aspies. You can take your time, you can edit and remove things you wrote, you can sit there wearing nothing and chew gum or eat cookies instead of being well dressed, you don't have to make any eye contact. Writing is perfect for people who don't talk too well. Once you get your typing speed up enough it can be faster than talking.

Small-talk type conversation I'm quite good at irl. Most sorts of in-depth conversation I'm bad at. I'm not too good in real-time typing either for those either, often. Ideas are complex things!
I stutter though, not all the time, but enough that it's bothersome. When I speak French, (the only other language I'm semi-fluent in), I nearly always stutter now. That upsets me quite a bit when I think about it, because I *will* avoid speaking in French unless the person I'm speaking to can't really speak English at all because of the stuttering, and so of course my ability to speak and understand it is dying as a result. (Not that I get lots of opportunities to speak French, but when I travel, once or twice a year, it'll crop up as half new Brunswick is French and I'll often drive through Quebec.) Of course the shift in language stuttering makes sense though, stuttering is all about tension, and most situations where one feels like they have to speak another language are going to by default be a little more...tense. (Tense isn't the right word, but that's all I've got.)
It's strange the stuttering though. I used to stutter as a child up until, oh, grade 2 or 3 quite frequently, but it never bothered me then at all. In fact, I barely remember doing it, just that people told me that I did back then. It petered off fairly quickly though. Suddenly one summer though, I was 13 I think, it came back with a vengeance. Maybe puberty had something to do with it.

I do very much enjoy body language and facial expression and tone and such that real-life conversation has. I've no issues that I've ever noted about reading other people. My husband gets upset that I read him TOO well. I think most people are open books, once you get to know them really well at least.

Communicating is more than just words of a language though. There's a lot of nuance to non-verbal communicating, and within tone inflection of language itself. (even though English words all mean the same thing no matter what tone you add to them, the meaning of an idea can come off quite differently; sarcastic, questioning, wondering, etc.)

Sometimes if I'm typing quickly and have a good sense of what I want to say, I'll unconsciously skip typing entire words. Not always articles or conjunctions, but whole nouns or verbs too.

1. Typing is easier than speaking. Much much easier than speaking.

2. You have the ability to go back and look at what you said before sending it.

3. You have the ability to go back look at what they said.

4. All of body language and tone of voice has already been dropped out.

These sound like good reasons. But sometimes I have a need to immediately reply and have no fear of doing it. I am a lousy typer.

Nobody has brought up the "Intense World Theory" which according to Wikipedia "seeks to explain autism's "core cognitive consequences of hyper-perception, hyper-attention, hyper-memory and hyper-emotionality."] According to the Intense World Theory, individuals with autism-spectrum disorders are "hypersensitive" to the world around them. Accord to the theory, the pathology in autism may be hyper-functioning of local neural microcircuits. It's argued that local neural microcircuits in individuals with autism possess both "hyper-reactivity" and "hyper-plasticity". Up until now this theory has been an outlier but a study that came out a few days ago showed children with autism had more brain connections the non autistic children http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.asp ... id=1104609

Logic has nothing to do with it, it's the fact that's it's not in real time, doesn't require actually talking, and everyone else has just as little social cues. It levels out the playing field.

Communicating online is harder for me than communicating IRL because of several reasons:
-I am extremely paranoid. I fear that people on the web are stalkers that are trying to get my personal information in some complex ways or are trying to hack my computer. Also I am 16, and I fear I could be the victim of an online f*cked up pedophile. Reason why I don't use teen dating sites despites some people advising me to. And I'm never going to use any dating site. Ever;
-Sometimes it's hard for me to express myself through writing (but I don't always have this problem);
-People seem to misunderstand what I write online even more than what I say IRL;
-Go back to point 1, and you'll understand why I'm never going to call "friend" a person I've met online;
-Chatting online with someone for me it's pretty much live having a person in front of me that I can't see because there is a black curtain between us. And I don't know what that person is like, and if they are dangerous or not, and if there is a way they can find out who I am and harm me.
I am paranoid around people IRL as well, but I think I am more about people on the web. Technically, I can't know if everyone is lying to me, the big part is, just some are, or no one is. I usually tend to think that most people lie and pretend to be someone they are not.

I'm a better written communicator overall, and I do agree that it's easier to communicate online than in person. I can sit and think about what I'm going to write, go back and edit, etc. But I think that another benefit to online communication is how anonymous it feels to me. (unfortunately, that does have some downsides in some places, where trolling can and does happen. People feel free to say anything, and there aren't any serious consequences).

There's no small talk online, discussion is usually topic-based, and I don't have to say anything if I have nothing to say.

Sometimes, forums can get tricky for some days as I may also sufer with memory and stringing together a coherent message.

It is a preferred platform as there's no 'eye contact', quick thinking and less exoustion when talking as there's no talking and time to think of a reply. Writing nuance can as usual, still be hard to muster as I can't feel or sympathise with mritten word. Typing is otherwise easier than handwriting but deficets with dyslexia and such don't show as badly.

I think its because of body language and eye contact. I have a bad habit of texting too much

It's easier to communicate online because you have time to think about what you're going to say before you type, and if you make a mistake or something, you can simply delete it. It's not like so rushed. Plus, you can concentrate on what you're typing and not worry about eye contact and stuff.