What is a flame war?

Answer 1

flaming is when you verbally harass someone via a forum (usually another forum member who is bieng stupid.) a flame war would be when you go back and forth with someone or a group of people...

Answer 2

Flame Wars are when two or more people disagree in an online conversation and then start to attack each other rather than discuss the original topic.

Flame Wars often start when someone posts a question to a forum and someone else gives a less than helpful answer. A 3rd person then insults or attacks the useless post thus starting a flame war with the second poster.

Answer 3

A flame war is a series of flaming messages in electronic discussion groups such as usenet, mailing lists or internet forums. There are a number of characteristics of electronic communication which have been cited as being conducive to flame wars. Electronic communications do not easily transmit facial expressions or voice intonations which may serve to moderate the tone of a message. (However, some users may add on 'smileys' (e.g. ;) ) to lessen the sting of a negative post, or to clarify the meaning behind a post.) Also, there is typically a lag time between the time a message is transmitted and the time a reply is read. These two characteristics can cause a "positive feedback loop" in which the emotional intensity of an electronic exchange increases to extremely high levels.

Alternatively, flame wars may be instigated deliberately by Internet trolls.

Jay W. Forrester described a phenomenon that often happens in flamewars whereby participants talk past each other. Each participant employs a different mental model (i.e. due to fundamental differences in their assumptions about what a particular word or concept means, they are actually discussing two different things).

Answer 4

you call someone a name. They call you one back. You do this 300,000 times. That is a flame war.

Answer 5

Usually happens on forums. A dumbass says something stupid then a smart person tells him/her like it is. other smart people back them up and other dumbasses speak against them.

Answer 6

I believe it's when you are making fun of someone else (talking about them badly,whatever) and it erupts into an online argument.

Answer 7

Gay guy fight.