History
Evidence of debates which resulted in insults being exchanged quickly back-and-forth between two parties can be found throughout history. Arguments over the ratification of the United States Constitution were often socially and emotionally heated and intense, with many striking at one another with local newspapers. Also, such interactions have always been part of literary criticism. For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s contempt for Jane Austen's works often extended to the author herself, with Emerson describing her as “without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world.” In turn, Emerson himself was called a “hoary-headed toothless baboon” by Thomas Carlyle.
In the modern era, flaming was used at east coast engineering schools as a present participle in a crude expression to describe an irascible individual and by extension to such individuals on the earliest Internet chat rooms and message boards. Internet flaming was mostly observed in the Usenet hierarchies although it was known to occur in the WWIVnet and FidoNet computer networks as well. It was subsequently used in other parts of speech with much the same meaning.
The term "flaming" may originate from The Hacker's Dictionary, which in 1983 defined it as "to speak rabidly or incessantly on an uninteresting topic or with a patently ridiculous attitude". The meaning of the word has diverged from this definition since then.
The term may also derive from the expression "Eat flaming death!" which was popularized in the comic "CPU Wars" in 1977, and which concerned the on-going debate over the relative merits of IBM and DEC, usually in an over-the-top, absurd manner (incidentally also referenced in the Hacker's Dictionary).
Read more about this topic: Flaming (Internet)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)