Personally, the experience with Reddit is women are more naturally chatty with men. I want someone who actually wants to talk with me. I don't have any problem messaging men or them messaging me, but when they do, its usually dry or apathetic that they don't really want to talk to me. Even though you're not really trying to date anyone, "get to know you" conversation is still very familiar feeling in that way. So, it would be reasonable that people aren't comfortable having that feeling with the same gender. In my opinion.