> The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
>
>
> By Stephen Leahy
>
>
>
> "Don't work too hard," wrote a colleague in an e-mail today.
> Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but
> I'm probably wrong.
>
> According to recent research published in the Journal of
> Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance
> of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study
> also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted
> the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.
>
> "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist
> Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted
> the research with Justin Kruger of New York University.
> "People in our study were convinced they've accurately
> understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their
> odds are no better than chance," says Epley.
Of course, this does not explain why someone has to reply in an arrogant or aggressive way instead of ascertaining the intentions of the sender.
My own take of it is that internet flame wars are a form of power trips. Some people have an emotional need for going on such trips (which is a subject in itself), but they face a high transaction cost of such behavior in their everyday lives. At the minimum, they would face pissed off people, and it gets only worse, from being sacked from a job, to breaking up a relationship, or even to being sued or arrested. So many of these people either do not go on power trips they secretly desire, or do so in a passive-aggressive way, e.g. by making snide comments, asking stupid questions, or "innocently" provoking other people.
However, the anonymity and immediate response provided by the internet reduce these transaction costs of power trips to zero. You can go on any power trip you want, from engaging in a flame war to fooling your interlocutor into thinking you are someone else, to hurling any imaginable insult at your interlocutor without facing any consequences of your mischief. So people use the medium for the power trips that they always wanted but were afraid to pursue in their real lives. In a real life, the person my by a contemptible twerp sitting in his cubicle and sucking up to his bosses, or afraid to speak up or even talk back - but "on the internet nobody knows that he is a dog" http://www.jeffsandquist.com/OnTheInternetNobodyKnowsYouAreADog.aspx - so the twerp can transform himself into a superman by sniping on people anonymously.
In a word, internet seems an ideal venue for power trips for cowards.
Wojtek