I've been a member of the web community for a long time.  I work for a web-based company at the moment, and for a long time I was assigned to the "communities" area, meaning the people interacting places like chatrooms and message boards.  For the most part, the company-sponsored communities were heavily monitored and had lots of rules, so rule-breakers were admonished quickly and often.  Even banned, if possible.  Of course hackers found ways to circumvent that, but that's beside the point.

No matter where you go for web communities, or how heavily monitored, there are flame wars.  For those new to web communities, that's the term used to describe wars of words between one or more participants in a chatroom (where text is ephemeral at best), message boards (where text is more or less permanent), or wherever else people find to yell at each other.

Now I'm all for the Internet.  I consider it to be a good thing.  With all good things come the bad, though, and flame wars count.  Some would argue that flame wars are good, even "fun," which means that they engage in them whenever possible.  Ah, the power of anonymity.  The freedom to hurl the worst kind of contempt and venom and bile and even physical threats behind the shield of so-called anonymity.  These days true anonymity is a myth.  Somehow or someway, people can be tracked right to their keyboards, but for the most part, appropriate measures are missing for doing so.  This means that even the youngest, weakest, sickest, or dare I say ugliest patches of humanity can engage in levels on viciousness that would never occur in face-to-face conversation.  Oh, the participants swear up and down that it would.  Of course Combatant A would say all that stuff right to Combatant B's fat, pimply face.  Yep.

I have a term for this that no one but me seems interested in using:  Keyboard Cowardice.  I hesitate to spell it as "Kowardice" for the sake of complete alliteration.  I would go so far as to proclaim that the vast majority of those who insist on their ancestors' graves they'd be just as much in yo' face in person as when hiding behind the relative safety of the home computer, are Liars.  Forgive me if I don't buy that 15-year-old, 100-pound "KiLLnstYnc" would be as venomous towards 26-year-old, 175-pound closet martial artist "SenSeiNoMore" if locking gazes in an alley.  I just can't.  To be fair, though, there are some humans who exist who could do just that - give the same shit face to face with anyone as they give anonymously.  I believe that those people all live in New York City.

I suppose that I could attempt to understand the appeal of engaging in flame wars, but I don't see the point.  If I understood it, I might become interested in joining one myself, even if as an experiment, and that won't do.  It's very difficult to get me riled, but when that happens, I still make it a point of walking away from a fight.  For me to do otherwise could get way too messy, because I'm the sort who, if out of control, really would try to take down the closet martial artist described above.  Oh, most likely the floor would be given a good polishing with my ass, but I'd still try.  So it's best for all concerned that I turn the other cheek (no pun intended) as often as possible.

That being said, I actually do follow the rule referred to earlier, which is that I will not say anything to anyone online that I wouldn't say to their face.  The price I pay for this is very, very few responses to anything that I post on favored message boards.  See, it seems that the ones who deliberately show up to "start shit" really do get the most attention.  Pity.  Granted, I believe that everything should be about me, but not under those circumstances.  So in the case of attention-seekers whose only method appears to be madness, if trying to catch my eye, they'll have to use a different tack.

Thank you and good night.