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