From: utzoo!decvax!cca!hplabs!hao!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!teklabs!ucbcad!ucbvax:ARPAVAX:UNKNOWN:G:fantods@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.singles
Title: The Psychology of Flames
Article-I.D.: populi.460
Posted: Tue Nov 16 12:46:29 1982
Received: Sat Nov 20 10:56:55 1982

Sigh.  Can anyone tell me the article number of Mr. Glerum's
"original sin" (sic)?

All you people who aren't used to the net, or flames, our apologies.
Get used to them, enjoy it, and flame back, perhaps by private mail.
You may end up creating your own personal, amiable, discussions,
since the networks, by their nature, distance everything and
turn into Letters to the Editor columns.  The same psychological
forces are at work.  I think that anything seen in print,
be it here or in the Daily Blat, tosses the reader down one
power level, and if the reader disagrees with it in any way,
the tendency is to reestablish the lost power level by
jumping up and down and yelling.
Even in Amateur Press Associations, which are precursors to networks
and work sort of the same way but on paper,
one of the hardest things to do is not to flame first
and ask questions later.  There are a lot of things I say
on the net that I probably wouldn't say in person.  I don't
think I'm a monster, and probably the rest of you out there in
phlame-land aren't either.  It's just distance, and the strange
pseudo-conversational way the net works.

I say all this partly because those people who are chastising
everyone for landing hard on poor Ellen and Mr . Glerum are
shouting and screaming themselves.  We're ALL DOING IT!!!!
So, I say, tough intestinal wastes, okay?

Richard "Set-The-Record-Straight" Moorman