Flame wars as psychopathology. What's behind those flaming hot e-mails or UseNet flame wars or MetaFilter comments?. Perhaps, as John Suler suggested, there are a number of factors, including dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection (altered self-boundaries), dissociative imagination, and minimzation of authority, as he discussed in his fascinating 2004 paper (note: .pdf). Is there, as the NY Times piece asks, "a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world"? Flaming previously covered by MeFi here, here, here, and of course, here.
posted on Feb 20, 2007 - View this thread