Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Flaming and Trolling

I had previously never heard of the terms flaming and trolling in technology, although apparently they go back to the origin of online communication in the 1980's. Yet, they are commonly used words for online bullying.
I like the term flaming; which is used as a form of computer bullying when an individual is extremely critical to another online and expresses anger in the fastest way possible, (by typing it in a message). This reminded me of the phrase "getting burned" which isn't exactly the same, but similar. This also reminded me of my own use of quick technology such as text messaging or facebook chat to express anger in the most efficient, non in person way.
I thought the term trolling was interesting as well, especially for its use in political campaigns, where a political troller for example) writes negative comments about a political figure such as Barack Obama on a blog. The troll can either use his/her real name or a pseudonym. Apparently one defines a troll as someone posting comments that intentionally disrupts online communities, in oppose to an individual blogging about opposing ideas who is making a point to promote dialouge.

2 comments:

  1. Flaming is a very common activity especially when playing online games. Xbox games like Halo or Call of Duty which make it easy for an individual to have a microphone, while still using a fake name, allows for easy access to flaming.

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  2. You can trace the derivation to a phrase used to say someone is a jerk, which makes reference to a certain form of nonstandard sexual activity.

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