[Air-l] Flame Wars

[Eva Ekeblad]

At 19.34 -0800 02-01-10, robert m. tynes scrobe:
>PS Sorry Eva, Frank, and Janne for paraphrasing and hog-tieing your
>points. I tried to be gentle.

Well, that's allright with me. It was evident you were "doing summary" -
and then you're doing a summary ;-) I agree with you we could use some more
definitions, so thanks for bringing up the topic, it's well worth another
round, BOTH in terms of definition, and of observations of where Net
culture(s) might be going.

>Why flame?

Well, in the cases where it isn't a game (as I can see that it could be,
given the right context) - where there's real emotion (more or less
lasting) behind it, those emotions tend to be of the hot kind: anger, hurt
etc. Emotions that characteristically have "hot" physical symptoms
(metaphors we live by!!) like my flaming cheeks. At being wildly
misinterpreted and on basis of that being called, among other things, "a
fat iron lady" - that's about as close as I get to abusive language in the
Net circles I move in. Janne's sketch of the circumstances working for or
against flaming was pretty apt, I think. There must be a multiplicity of
Net cultures by now.

Since your original question was brief, the range of phenomena that you're
after wasn't all that clear. Perhaps there are forms of prolonged
multiparticipant conflicts in electronic networks that are not "flame wars"?

>Why flame?

Well, why people DO it - why we have this penchant for engaging our
emotions that "hot" way in this apparently "cool" medium... that is a good
question. From my experience of Net conflict I'd say that two important
factors are A) the strength of collective investment in framing the group
as a "community" (boundary wars!); and B) the strength of investment in the
self-image of individual participants (if we didn't care we wouldn't care
;-)

my two Uruguayan pesos
http://hem.fyristorg.com/evaek/weeds/requarto/0110.html

Eva Ekeblad