Lumifer seems easily emotionally agitated by signals that I'm very high status.

I'm with Lumifer on this one. On the Internet it's much much harder to determine someone's true emotions, because IRL we subconsciously determine it by looking at facial expression and body language. Have you ever tried online emotional intelligence tests? It takes split second to correctly determine somebody's emotion just by seeing only eyes expression. On textual Internet we don't have such opportunity. My hypothesis: people vocalize other people's comments in their mind, and if that speech sounds agitated in their mind, they infer that the commenter is agitated.

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, and nobody knows what you actually feel like. I see time and time again, how conversations are derailed: — my thesis is X, — I think you're wrong, because Y, — no, it's actually X, because A, B, C, — why are you angry at me? — I'm not angry, why do you think I'm angry? — it certainly seems you're angry, I don't think you're capable of continuing a rational conversation — WTF?

Inferring people's emotions on the Internet is unreliable, derailing a conversation by starting talking about conversants' emotions is very unproductive. Even if somebody wrote a rant, EVEN IF THEY WRITE IN ALL CAPS, they might not be angry, agitated, upset. They just feel strongly about the topic. But feeling strongly ≠ being emotionally upset. I feel strongly about immortality and go on long rants about how everyone should throw money at SENS and freeze themselves. But I don't cry in bed that I'm most certainly gonna die and I probably actually think about immortality for less than 10 minutes a day.