Flames in Cyberspace

Philip A. Thompsen discusses the idea of flaming, in Cyberspace and Communication, an issue which we discussed briefly in class today. Personally, I appreciate the original definition of flaming, "to speak rabidly or incessantly on an uninteresting topic or with a patently ridiculous attitude." This came out of a 1983 version of "The Hacker's Dictionary" and I have to say that translates to a point to today's version of flaming (331.)

But, personally, I have witnessed a lot less of overtly flaming on the internet, but more manipulation in order to transmit the same or similar emotions of anger, frustration, and argument that flaming is defined as. I do not see flaming as much, but more so constructive, relatively cruel, critiques of individuals in a Myspace/Facebook environment, or a blog/academic environment.

I agree with Thompsen when he suggest that flaming is a mixture of media experience and skills, and the social influence of the form. More flaming I have witnessed occurs on message boards, where the open forum makes flaming almost permissible. On blogs or Facebookesc sites, I see less flaming because of the nature of the "social influence" of the forum. As Professor Strate mentioned in class, Facebook is a "safe" environment, and there is no room for flaming to be a common place.

What do you think? I think web 1.0 types of websites allowed for flaming to occur more than Web 2.0, which makes interpersonal conversation more constructive, then 1.0 which made it constrained to a more linear form. But honestly, I do not see flaming as much now than I saw it say 7 or 8 years ago. Why?

-Jessica Vanacore