There they sit, each at a computer keyboard, each angrily typing, each determined to condemn, correct or chastise the other.
There’s Troglodyte, fiercely disdainful of new-age values. There’s ALLCAPS, who makes up for limited intelligence by capitalizing his insults. There’s Profundus Maximus, who uses cryptic terms to bluff his way through an argument.
This is Mike Reed’s world of “flamers”–Internet chat-room or bulletin board users whose boorish or mean-spirited behavior makes the Net an ugly place to play.
Over the years, Reed, a Minneapolis children’s book illustrator, has posted caricatures of 84 mythical flamers and flamer-haters. To enter his Flame Warriors site (www.winternet.com/(tilde)mikelr/flame1.html) is sort of like entering a hellish “Sesame Street” populated by Oscar the Grouch and 83 of his relatives.
Anyone who has experienced the occasionally rude environment of many chat rooms, or has become ensnared in a contentious exchange of e-mails, can find their bad selves–or their combatants–in Reed’s subculture.
Nancy Tamosaitis, a New York author who wrote “net.talk,” a book about the way people talk online), found herself laughing after a reporter asked her to check out Reed’s site.
“I’ve encountered every type of flamer Mike characterizes online,” Tamosaitis e-mailed. “From the Netiquette Nazi [if you stray from the posted forum guidelines, she will yell at you] to the Impostor [the 21-year-old coed who turns out to be a retired autoworker].”
Reed was drawn to flaming during the days of Usenet, a pre-Internet collection of discussion forums. He was a prankster, posting fictitious messages intended to outrage members of groups devoted to discussing raw vegetables or the use of crystals in healing. “I thought it was like creating fiction in real time.”
He eventually outgrew that behavior but remained fascinated by the personalities he had mocked. In the late-1990s, he was participating in a software test as a technician when an online fight broke out among some of the testers. He started to post drawings and descriptions of some of the people.
“When they saw themselves pictured that way, it took some heat off,” Reed said. “Then I thought of more types. Every morning I’d knock off a couple. I’d just leave them up on the ‘Net.”
He drew with a digital pen and a painting program that inserted colors. Gradually, the number of visitors to his Web site swelled, reaching points as distant as Finland and Bulgaria, with requests to translate his profiles into Turkish and Hebrew.
David Woolley, a Minneapolis Internet consultant who specializes in group communication, said that although Reed’s perspective is valid, an increasing number of discussion groups are employing stronger moderators to banish anyone who engages in personal attacks.
None of which lessens the essential truth behind Flame Warriors: Some people turn into monsters when they can hide behind the anonymity of a screen name.
“People act on pure emotion when they read and react to Internet postings,” Tamosaitis said. “Freed from having to look a fellow poster in the eyes, people’s honest emotions are unleashed.”
Reed has a more specific diagnosis.
“Basically, flaming happens because people are not good writers,” he said. “Whenever they think they’re expressing irony or wry humor, their writing is not good enough to carry that sense, and people take it the wrong way. I can’t tell you how many times somebody imagines they’re wittily ironic and they come off as sarcastic.”
———-
Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cipasquale@tribune.com) and Joe Knowles (jknowles@tribune.com)
