This can't be overemphasized enough. Outside the internet, people simply do not have equal ability to garner attention. This is due to a variety of reasons, depending on context. In a room full of people, for example, you have to read the room and demonstrate a certain level of social awareness if you want to be heard.
The same is not true for most social media platforms. Instead, people are given equal opportunity to incite discussion -- and the most inflammatory material typically rises to the top. This is not a stable social order: It's an attention-deficit-seeking social order.
Forums like HN account for this, by placing higher value on longer posts, written with the intent to be a positive contribution to the community. (I suspect, but am not sure, that the length of the post is part of the algorithm here.)
On old-school forums, people valued the identities they created, and worked to protect the reputations of those identities, even if they were anonymous. Strangely, even though people often use their real name in contemporary social media, they often don't attempt to protect their reputations, when engaging online. That is a mystery to me.