flaming

Flaming is the act of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting, usually in the social context of a discussion board (usually on the Internet). Such messages are called flames, and are sometimes posted in response to flamebait. ... Flaming is one of a class of economic problems known as The Tragedy of the Commons, when a group holds a resource (in this case, communal attention), but each of the individual members has an incentive to overuse it. Although the trading of insults is as old as time itself, flaming on the Internet, like many other online 'actions', started in the ... (view more)