Flaming (Internet) - History

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).