What is the purpose of flaming in general?
This is a highly subjective topic, but most flames are usually intended to put down another person or their ideas, or start a critical discussion. Often this is seen as a competition sport, and many users will treat it as such, some even going so far as to “keep score”. When seen this way, it’s a sport with a long heritage; many may be familiar with “doin’ the dozens” or simply “dirty dozens”, another popular form of flamewar. To others, it’s simply a way to blow off steam. It’s been suggested that if more people took advantage of this largely-anonymous and relatively harmless form of stress relief, there’d be far fewer instances of real-world (“meat world”, for Gibson fans) violence. This may not be universally true, but many of us swear by it.
