Flaming and trolling
Created | Updated Oct 5, 2005
Flaming is a hazard of chat rooms, news groups or anywhere you might have an audience on the web and, while definitions vary, a flame is a post meant to antagonise or upset another user on the aforementioned forums. Wholesale insult trading can be quite common, often known as a flame war, and you tend to find that different forums are more or less tolerant of the activity dependent on how well/strictly moderated they are.
How flame wars start can be quite innocuous: a simple disagreement, a post with an ambiguous tone or by deliberate intent but whatever the case fracas’s can escalate quickly and be rather long running. In general the more relaxed manners and the ease in misinterpreting tone inherent in text exchanges can mean you are sucked into a bitter exchange before you know it. Whether you enjoy such concentration or not, it’s often a good idea to recognise when you are past the point of reasonable exchange so you can either
a, Move on and save yourself the annoyance
b, Sufficiently detach yourself from the exchange to enjoy the banter (although a word of warning perpetuating a flame war may annoy any moderators and other users, resulting in a banning or general alienation.)
I intend to use this entry to outline a few of the tactics deployed in flaming, mostly for my personal interest, but also as a rough guide for the un initiated. Entries will be in no specific order, and appear as and when I come across or remember past exchanges.
First up, let’s talk about the professional flamers. or trolls. Trolls essentially are people who appear to love starting or perpetuating a fight, some may appear to be playing devil’s advocate, but should not be confused with a Gadfly. Generally trolls will show a pattern of offensive behaviour and unlike Gadflies will usually descend rapidly into trading insults irrelevant to the original topic.
Trolls come in several flavours here are a few examples:
Regulars who will spam groups with the same topic again and again with little variation, by their nature you will not likely recognise this type of troll until they’ve had a few months to settle in. More advanced versions of this kind of troll may perpetuate long running arguments across groups/board subject areas and so can be more easily spotted.
Conspiracy theorists, more spam really, but usually more fanatical and tend to diversify from banging on about “moon landing fakes” etc. to the moderators/other posters are out to get me. Nonsensical and one track-minded, this troll is best avoided for sanity’s sake unless of course you are somewhat sadistic and like to kick people when they are already obviously down.
The insulting, some people just love to hit the gutter and will write something which at first glance looks like a sensible point, but they will fast deviate from that topic with insults and antagonism as the discussion goes on. Typically if you find you are no longer discussing the original topic and calling someone a fool, you know either you’re talking to or possibly are the troll.
Whatever the case, trolling tends to be long term behaviour, so be careful of labelling someone just because they annoy you. If in doubt as to whether you are being goaded (or baited) by a troll see if you can check up on their track record newer style message boards for example should allow you to examine the recent postings of any user you come across.
Flaming or ways to annoy people.
Flame bait, is the generally a term for an insulting post that seeks to provoke a reply in a similar mould and there are hundreds of ways people will attempt to bypass moderation or just plain antagonise you, here are a few examples.
Name flame, a purposeful mis-spelling, anagram or play on words used to upset people. It tends to be low level and therefore passes the attention of less savvy moderators, but done often enough it will usually be quite effective in annoying people. This flame tends to take two forms,
the impersonal e.g. in creation evolution debates, evolution becomes eviloution and creationism, cretinism
And the personal, repeatedly referring to a person with the name Richard as Dick for example or Clare as mare. You get the idea, it’s childish but unbelievably effective at upsetting people; for some reason people will respond to such petty insults on the net in a way they would just laugh off in real life.
More to follow….
How flame wars start can be quite innocuous: a simple disagreement, a post with an ambiguous tone or by deliberate intent but whatever the case fracas’s can escalate quickly and be rather long running. In general the more relaxed manners and the ease in misinterpreting tone inherent in text exchanges can mean you are sucked into a bitter exchange before you know it. Whether you enjoy such concentration or not, it’s often a good idea to recognise when you are past the point of reasonable exchange so you can either
a, Move on and save yourself the annoyance
b, Sufficiently detach yourself from the exchange to enjoy the banter (although a word of warning perpetuating a flame war may annoy any moderators and other users, resulting in a banning or general alienation.)
I intend to use this entry to outline a few of the tactics deployed in flaming, mostly for my personal interest, but also as a rough guide for the un initiated. Entries will be in no specific order, and appear as and when I come across or remember past exchanges.
First up, let’s talk about the professional flamers. or trolls. Trolls essentially are people who appear to love starting or perpetuating a fight, some may appear to be playing devil’s advocate, but should not be confused with a Gadfly. Generally trolls will show a pattern of offensive behaviour and unlike Gadflies will usually descend rapidly into trading insults irrelevant to the original topic.
Trolls come in several flavours here are a few examples:
Regulars who will spam groups with the same topic again and again with little variation, by their nature you will not likely recognise this type of troll until they’ve had a few months to settle in. More advanced versions of this kind of troll may perpetuate long running arguments across groups/board subject areas and so can be more easily spotted.
Conspiracy theorists, more spam really, but usually more fanatical and tend to diversify from banging on about “moon landing fakes” etc. to the moderators/other posters are out to get me. Nonsensical and one track-minded, this troll is best avoided for sanity’s sake unless of course you are somewhat sadistic and like to kick people when they are already obviously down.
The insulting, some people just love to hit the gutter and will write something which at first glance looks like a sensible point, but they will fast deviate from that topic with insults and antagonism as the discussion goes on. Typically if you find you are no longer discussing the original topic and calling someone a fool, you know either you’re talking to or possibly are the troll.
Whatever the case, trolling tends to be long term behaviour, so be careful of labelling someone just because they annoy you. If in doubt as to whether you are being goaded (or baited) by a troll see if you can check up on their track record newer style message boards for example should allow you to examine the recent postings of any user you come across.
Flaming or ways to annoy people.
Flame bait, is the generally a term for an insulting post that seeks to provoke a reply in a similar mould and there are hundreds of ways people will attempt to bypass moderation or just plain antagonise you, here are a few examples.
Name flame, a purposeful mis-spelling, anagram or play on words used to upset people. It tends to be low level and therefore passes the attention of less savvy moderators, but done often enough it will usually be quite effective in annoying people. This flame tends to take two forms,
the impersonal e.g. in creation evolution debates, evolution becomes eviloution and creationism, cretinism
And the personal, repeatedly referring to a person with the name Richard as Dick for example or Clare as mare. You get the idea, it’s childish but unbelievably effective at upsetting people; for some reason people will respond to such petty insults on the net in a way they would just laugh off in real life.
More to follow….
