In a weird moment, Dennis Richards, vice president of the Planning Commission, basically suffered a Twitter meltdown over the weekend, reacting as if he’d been publicly attacked.

When you read the posts that triggered his wrath — and everyone in City Hall is scanning them now — they’re not nasty. In fact, Richards’ responses were so extreme and inexplicable that some Twitter readers suggested his account must have been hacked.

But Richards not only denied that, he also doubled down with some language that had people wincing in disbelief. They ranged from “F— you, — hole,” to: “You are a douche bag. Go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under.”

Let’s just say it wasn’t his finest hour. Or hours, since it went on for some time. It all began with a provocative post on Gawker, which proposed that building any kind of housing, even market rate, would ease the crunch. The headline, “San Francisco, Build More Housing —holes,” sums up the tone. A reader sent the link to Richards on Twitter.

It touched a nerve with Richards, who believes in historic preservation and managing development. He quickly jumped on Twitter users who tried to start a dialogue with him about the article.

Contacted Monday, Richards was contrite — mostly.

“This is the first time I’ve done it,” he said. “Once you send out the first one you feel better. Then you send the second one. And you think, well that wasn’t very professional, but it definitely felt good at the time.”

And if he had it to do over?

“I probably wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I played into his hands. But I’m human. And if this doesn’t show that I’m human, what will?”

Richards says he was mostly angry at local techie Patrick Traughber, calling him “a professional troll.”

Frankly, Traughber’s comments seemed pretty innocuous. He had tweeted to Richards: “I find our regressive, exclusionary zoning laws more offensive than profanity in a Gawker post.” On Monday, Traughber declined to speak about the exchanges in detail, but said in a short email, “I think the Commissioner’s offensive words speak for themselves and I find his conduct to be unbecoming of a public officer. San Francisco deserves better than that.”

Espouses more care

Richards was particularly upset because he feels building design and historic preservation are being overlooked in the push to create housing.

“Who cares what it looks like?” he said, channeling building advocates. “Just slap it up there. It’s build, build, build.”

The author of the Gawker piece, Hamilton Nolan, actually makes some good economic points, although his crude language is designed to tweak someone like Richards.

“I saw that he was having a hissy fit,” said Nolan, who is based in New York. “A lot of people do that on Twitter, but usually not government officials — which is what makes it fun.”

Board of Supervisors President London Breed has had her own Twitter war adventures. Back in 2013, Traughber tweeted her to ask what she thought was the “biggest obstacle to creating safer streets for bicycling.” Breed replied, “Probably the bad behavior of some bicyclist(s).”

The raging reaction left Breed with Twitter scorch marks. She even took down her account for a while.

“I hate Twitter,” she said Monday. “I hope it goes away and never comes back. We’re all human. Nobody likes to be criticized or disrespected. Your natural instinct is to fight back, but as public officials, when we fight back it turns into something.”

I suppose we could look on the bright side and say this is an example of how concerned and engaged San Franciscans are. But the less optimistic view is that the two sides — preservation versus development — are so set in concrete that they seem they will never connect.

“San Francisco is beautiful,” Nolan said, “and historic preservation is great. But it is a false choice to say that you can only have historic preservation or affordable housing. It is possible to have both.”

Decrying the simplistic

As Richards admits, part of his over-the-top reaction is to criticism from those who insist, as Nolan does, that building housing at every level will decrease the overall cost for everyone.

“These simple solutions are starting to wear on me,” said Richards, who was appointed to the post in 2014.

That was definitely the tone of his tweets, which sounded progressively more angry and combative.

“I am tired of being so agreeable,” he wrote. “It’s time to be honest.”

Then there was: “I am pissed. It’s been building up for many months.”

That seemed pretty clear. Richards says his $300-a-week job as commissioner probably isn’t in danger. However, there’s been talk of his running for Supervisor in District Eight if Scott Wiener wins his state Senate bid.

As one Twitter user wrote, “That’s why I worry that Dennis isn’t cut out for politics.”

To which Richards replied, “Let’s let the voters decide that my friend.”

Oh, they definitely will.

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cwnevius