Here’s a snippet from The Cluetrain Manifesto that explains the phenomenon as good as any:
"In the early days, the Internet was used almost exclusively for government-funded projects and the sort of communication that went along with such work. Here’s the new program. It needs some work. There’s a bug in the frimular module. Yawn.
But you know what they say about all work and no play. People began to play. Left to themselves, they always do. And the people building the Internet were pretty much left to themselves. They were creating the gameboard. No one else knew how the hell this thing worked, so no one could tell them what they could and couldn’t do. They did whatever they liked. And one of the things they liked most was arguing.
Consider that these early denizens of the Net were, for the most part, young, brash, untrained in the intricate dance of corporate politics, and highly knowledgeable of their craft. In the prized and noble older sense of the term, they were hackers, and proud of it. Many, in their own assessment if not that of others, were net.gods — high priests of an arcane art very few even knew existed. When disagreements arose over serious matters — the correct use of quotation marks, say — they would join in battle like old Norse warriors:
“Jim, you are a complete idiot. Your code is so brain-damaged it won’t even compile. Read a book, moron.”
Today, we tend to think of “flaming” as a handful of people vociferously insulting each other online. A certain sense of finesse has largely been lost. In the olden days, a good flame war could go on for weeks or months, with hot invective flying around like rhetorical shrapnel. It was high art, high entertainment. Though tempers flared hot and professional bridges were sometimes irreparably burned, ultimately it was a game — a participatory sport in which the audience awarded points for felicitous disparagements, particularly well-worded putdowns, inspired squelches.
It was not a game, however, for the meek of heart. These engagements could be fierce. Even trying to separate the contestants could bring down a hail of sharp-tongued derision. Theories were floated and defended with extreme energy and enthusiasm, if not always with logical rigor. Opinions tended to run high on any given topic. Say you’d posted about your dog. And, look, you got a response! “Jim, you are a complete idiot. Your dog is so brain-damaged it won’t even hunt…”
If you’d happened to see the first version of the comment to Jim, you might grin at the second. If not, your mileage might vary. But the point is not to extol flame wars, as amusing as some could be. Instead, it is to suggest a particular set of values that began to emerge in what linguists might call a well-bounded speech community. On the Net, you said what you meant and had better be ready to explain your position and how you’d arrived at it. Mouthing platitudes guaranteed that you would be challenged. Nothing was accepted at face value, or taken for granted. Everything was subject to question, revision, re-implementation, parody — whether it was an algorithm, a political philosophy or, God help you, an advertisement."
