Hidden Flamer – Sometimes you just are not sure if you have been insulted or not. Some of the cryptic messages I have read directed towards fellow editorialists and news submitters seem almost to be a compliment, except for that once strange sentence that seems to completely reverse all the positive feedback they said in the first place. You end up not knowing what exactly he meant and if he was in support of your story or if he hated it.
Two Word Flamer – Probably the lamest of the bunch, they submit a comment consisting of two words, one of which is a derogatory term. Sometimes I wish Shoutwire had the bury feature that Spiked Humor has so users can just bury these useless comments.
I-don’t-want-to-read-this-crap Flamer – They complain about how stupid, pointless and badly written the article was without giving their opinion on the topic of the story. Then when you confront them, explain to them what an opinion is and ask them to stop reading your editorials or articles, they get all huffy like you don’t have the right to tell them to screw off. Yet they just did that to you.
Stalker Flamer – He’s the freaky one who follows you around and always, ALWAYS posts negative feedback insulting you and what you have written, no matter the topic. You could write about starving children in Africa and how we can fight to save them and they will insult you. They also are sure to bring up your past articles to show you they have been reading everything you write. Why they continue to read your ‘crap’ you can never be sure, but they do. Eventually their stalking becomes a bit strange so your best bet is to completely ignore them and hope they go away.
I-can-do-it-better Flamer – These guys insult you, say what you’re writing is worthless trash, and then claim they could do far better with a tenth of the effort. Yet they don’t make that effort. They just disappear, wait for your next article, then say the same thing about that, yet in a slightly different manner with an increasingly insulting tone.
Political Flamer – Politics is everything to this person. They live, breath, eat, sleep and walk it. Everything that ever happens, from taking a crap on the toilet, to how you clip your toenails in private is all politics. Thus this person tries to insert politics into an article that has as much political content as a computer has bio-matter. Then when you tell them they are off-topic, they claim politics is everything and insult you for not realizing this simple concept.
Foreign Language Flamer – These are rarer, but once and awhile you get someone who starts writing in their own language. Of course you cannot understand exactly what they are saying, but usually the large bold capital letters, lots of exclamation marks and the odd English curse word thrown in gives you a pretty decent idea what they are saying. You can never be 100% sure and you can’t exactly reply to their comments so pretending it doesn’t exist seems to work best.
Compulsive Liar Flamer – Some people seem to think they need to show up whatever the writer of the editorial writes about. So they spend time making up this gigantic story about how they are so much better than you – which is a complete and utter fabrication. They use this fictional story to try to make you look stupid. Of course these guys’ stories are sometimes so fictional it’s hard not to laugh at them for thinking they could create such a stupid story and not have anyone realize that it’s too far fetched to be true.
Non-Believer Flamer – How some people can be so suspicious I don’t know, but these guys refuse to believe anything and everything that they do not think is accurate. You write something about a situation in your life and they accuse you of lying, making up parts of the story, or they try to say your entire story is a lie. You try to convince them otherwise but it just strengthens their belief that you’re lying to them. They then proceed to try to convince everyone else reading the comments that you’re a liar and they start insulting your integrity – all without one shred of proof that you’re lying.
Anyone who has posted an article or written an editorial will have come across these various types of people. Everyone probably has been a bit guilty of this behavior themselves as well – myself included. I encourage people to take a step back, read what you have written before you post it. Ask yourself if what you’re saying falls under one of these categories. If it is, just erase it and start over. Flaming only increases the more you post, so if you start out with a flame, you’ll end up just flaming through the entire discussion and will not add much to the overall conversation.
I think everyone can agree, when the comments actually get a decent discussion going it can be quite interesting, until that one moron flamer joins the discussion and completely ruins it all. Don’t let that be you.
As mentioned below I forgot a few types, and of course a few flamers came up in response to this article. So I figured I'd add them.
Smart Ass Flamer - He's the guy who thinks he's intensely creative - he reeks of arrogance. He creates comments which no matter how you reply, he'll twist it in such a way to make you look bad. If you tell him you love him and respect his opinion he will find a way to twist that into something it is not. These guys are the king of flamers as they at least have the intelligence to do it in a creative manner. But this is not something to be proud of.
Horribly Illiterate Flamer - The one you can never quite understand as their grammar and spelling are that of a one year old's. The only way you can tell it'0s an insult is the fact that the words 'fuck' and 'you' are somewhere in the same sentence - misspelled of course.
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