@ariadne Okay, but we can all agree the magic 8-ball is always correct when it says "Outlook not so good".

@Susan60 @paulschoe

“If we used tablets where we wrote by hand with a stylus, would that reduce the nastiness online? Would we feel that we were engaging in a more personal way with others? Would empathy be generated more often?”

I’m not that optimistic it would improve the general tenor online directly, but a lot more insults and flame wars would die out almost immediately due to mutual illegibility.

On the broader subject, I got a refurb’d reMarkable tablet from Woot earlier this year, and I use it just for handwriting notes for work. And it’s been way more useful than I ever expected. Expensive luxury, yes absolutely. Also kind of an ADHD crutch (don’t have multiple loose legal pads floating around, just the one expensive device with half a dozen digital notebooks).

@deviantollam The closest thing I can think of is pop-up/under ads.

And considering (outside a very small crowd of ad thugs) those had the popularity of genital herpes...