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Q&A: Why flame wars erupt online

By Tim Danton

Posted on 27 Nov 2009 at 14:16

People behave oddly on the internet. They cheat, argue, hurl insults and generally behave in a way completely unlike their day-to-day behaviour. To find out why, PC Pro editor Tim Danton interviewed psychologist Patricia Wallace, author of one of the defining works on this subject: The Psychology of the Internet. More recently, she’s also published The Internet in the Workplace.

Q What motivates people to behave so viciously? Why do they say such terrible things in emails and on forums, that they'd never say face-to-face?

A The internet is an environment that draws out this sort of uncharacteristic behaviour. So it’s not always that people who are particular evil or angry or belligerent are the ones who are doing those flame wars online, it’s that all of us can be drawn into that by the very nature of the environment. It’s like how you behave differently when you’re on a beach than when you’re in the office. When you get online that environment affects your behaviour as well.

Q But what is about the internet that makes them behave in that way?

A We have evolved generation after generation to be able to adjust our behaviour and our comments based on that subtle, non-verbal, nuanced communication that we're watching when we're speaking or interacting with a person. Online, you can’t see someone flinch, or someone yawn, or their eyes rolling. So when you start communicating without that sort of feedback people become disinhibited.

It’s not just that they become more belligerent (and we know they do), they become more abrupt, and they also become more intimate than they would. They become less inhibited, revealing secrets, emotions, the kind of thing you wouldn’t if there was a person in front of you whose facial expressions and body language you could see.

Online you have this very clumsy tool to manage your own impression and to do that communication, and that’s the Qwerty keyboard

The other side of it is that we are masters of managing our own impressions in a face-to-face setting. You can use a wink, a slowing down of the voice, or a raising of the voice - all sorts of cues to suggest that you’re being ironic or you’re trying to be witty. In other words, you have a lot of ways to contextualise, to add meaning to your communication that is far beyond what your words are saying.

But online you have this very clumsy tool to manage your own impression and to do that communication, and that’s the Qwerty keyboard. You see people trying their best to make it warmer or soften it a bit, or add some kind of non-verbal nuance in the form of things like emoticons. Those are pretty silly compared to what you can do in person.

Q So the people who vent their frustration on the internet: do they feel guilt about it?

A Some do. Most people aren’t really aware that the environment is nurturing that kind of belligerence. They think it’s the other person’s fault, that they started it and I’m just responding. That’s kind of human nature. People aren’t aware of how their communication will be interpreted on the other end. They may have meant it one way but it was interpreted another way, more abrupt or blunt or belligerent or whatever. They just assume it was the other guy’s fault and that he’s an idiot.

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User comments

Wouldn't it be ironic if a flamewar erupted below?

Personally I think some people lack the imagination to envision a real person at the end of the conversation (which does after all require effort). Also an awful lot of people don't think before they speak anyway, so why should it be different online?

By c6ten on 27 Nov 2009

Lack of Cues/clues restricts responses

The massess of non-verbal clues allows us to adjust our responses to get the greatest benefit. If we can see/feel/hear that a person is making an attempt at a reasonable coherent point then whether we agree with it or not we will behave and respond sympathetically. With an unreasonble/agressive/ill-thought out response we will probably behave differently. With a lack of cues there is a temptation to treat everyone in an unsympathetic manner. Just like my ex-wife swore and cursed when behind a steering wheel, unlike here normal calm and mostly reasonable and pleasant manner.

By Manuel on 27 Nov 2009

Mac users are just like that...

Flame on!

I am kidding by the way! Seriously though, if people are passionate about a subject they will fight their corner and forums give people an avenue not otherwise available, to voice their opinion and be heard in public.

If you see something that you feel strongly is wrong and have the chance to reply, why wouldn't you?

By cheysuli on 27 Nov 2009

The masks are the wrong way round

People often say that we hide behind masks on the 'net, and that's what allows us to be rude / aggressive / etc.

But I think it's the other way round. On the Internet you get to see the 'real' person. Their raw personality. It's with face to face communication where masks start to appear, as people filter their reactions based on what they think is acceptable in a particular situation and when dealing with the individuals concerned.

'Real life' communications are filtered and adjusted - how people appear online is how they really are, and shows the state they'd revert to without the niceties of society's rules and the conditioning we all receive as we grow up.

By PaulOckenden on 27 Nov 2009

Anonymity presumption

I can't say I agree with the assumption made about how people would behave if they were anonymous in real life. I've been in more situations where that applies than I've had hot dinners - and the reality is, they look for roles in the people around them. Once the cliches are in place, they respond first to the roles, and second to the person. This is a well-developed trick in certain types of management course - take everyone's badge off and forbid personal anecdotes. What happens next?

By Steve_Cassidy on 27 Nov 2009

@PaulOckenden Gloomy but generally supported by the historical record. As human societies have evolved they have steadily accreted norms and rules of behaviour, but there is a lot of evidence that when there is war or famine those rules very quickly get jettisoned and selfish behaviour takes over.

In the online world a lot of us started from scratch as far as norms of behaviour are concerned, and rules are not as easily enforced, so we get a relapse to more primitive relationships. Hopefully norms will evolve over time and people will start to behave more as they would in the real world.

As for the argument about anonymity, a lot of people need to learn that it doesn't really exist online, where everything is stored and everything is searchable. It is tempting for some people to think that they can ignore the consequences of what the say or do. A bit like the old moral canard of whether you would steal if nobody could ever find out about it. That fools an awful lot otherwise intelligent people, because it hardly ever happens that way.

By c6ten on 27 Nov 2009

This is an interesting article. I guess the online experience is a bit like arguing with a book - the words will never jump off the page and hit you.

Road Rage must be a similar phenomenon, where although drivers can see another driver, they cannot feel physically threatened by them and so act with less caution than would otherwise be the case.

I suspect age is also a factor. Sites that attract teenagers seem to have a lot more flame wars than others, and this can make life very nasty in schools were kids communicate *with people they know* over MSN or wherever. Online, they are as vicious as flame wars get, which makes face to face contact afterwards much more likely to lead to actual physical attacks. This doesn't explain why there seems to be really high levels of personal abuse on some physics and mathematics usenet groups though...

Another factor affecting things is how slow data entry is on a keyboard. In real life, we would probably use more words to express an emotion and include nuances, whereas with data entry by keyboard the slowness of typing reduces what we eventually post to shorter versions with fewer niceties or nuances included. After all, we are not so rude on the telephone despite having no visual cues either (except with some call centres of course!)

By SwissMac on 27 Nov 2009

"On the Internet you get to see the 'real' person. Their raw personality"
Not sure I would agree with that.
It might certainly be a raw version of that personality, but why is that more real than the sort of layer that comes from someone thinking first about the effect of what they will say on someone sitting in front of them?
If they've considered the effect on other people first, I think that's just as much "them" - in fact, it's arguably more the totality of the person than the raw reaction, which just comes from one "sub-routine".

By AdrianB on 27 Nov 2009

On the money

@PaulOckenden: You made some excellent points about raw personality, masks and real life communication. It's rather ironic that online you probably see the "real" person without their usual societal filters to cover for them.

By popeye91 on 28 Nov 2009

Bring back the birch, I say...

Two points:
. Lack of cues have been part of no-present communication since the invention of letter writing. There are conventions that control one's expression in letters. Who has ever, this side of year 7, EVER received a letter with the tone and language of the more heated flames? Anonymity is hardly the case when long-time forum participants slag each other off: they are as familiar with each other as any pub group.

. The truth seems to be that newsgroup flamers are behaving in an expected and conventional way - by the norms of their group. Flaming is acceptable, is part of the action, even 'funny' for those in the know. Not so for the poor soul who stumbles in with a noobie question and gets roasted for his/her helplessness...

Moderators who wish to can help posters remember to spray some deodorant on their emails by publicly yanking a flamer's access, thus making the site a lot more productive and pleasant to visit.

By pofadda on 29 Nov 2009