For those needing assistance before entering the site and being totally lost or clueless on what a FLAME is or how to do it. We have compiled a list of articles and sites to give the clueless or FLAME challenged among us some help. This is by no means all the information on the Web about Flaming, we will leave it to the reader to do some research on their own too.

Most importantly remember that this is a Flame War Forum. Don’t be surprised when you get flamed, look upon it as a challenge. Everyone is here to have fun, so don’t take anything you read to heart. If someone has flamed you well and countered your claims, don’t feel defeated. Congratulate your opponent on a well made argument. This is how alliances are formed, and this guy might be one to jump into an argument and defend you in the future. In the world of professional sport it is customary to shake hands after a well played match, and there is no reason why the same shouldn’t apply here.

• Demolish newsgroups and mailing lists!
• Increase the stress levels in many peoples lives! AND....
• Help you find an online scapegoat at a safe distance from you in real life to take out all your problems on!
  
  Techniques for Flaming

Technique #1: Make it personal!!

A good way to make an effective attack on someone is to take any comment you disagree with and turn it into a personal attack on yourself. For example, if a person disagrees with one of the viewpoints of your chosen political party, say "As a member of the (INSERT political party here) Party, I object to the fact that you think I am an uneducated, worthless, uninformed member of society. I think that you need to rethink your attack on me and my firmly held beliefs and learn to accept alternate views as valid." Don't worry if the offending person said nothing to imply you are undeducated, worthless, or uninformed: people aren't paying that much attention anyway, and will take your word for it.

Technique #2: Guilt trips.
You can do this in several ways. First, there's the generic guilt trip "Look, you don't know half of what I've been through in life. Why, when I was a kid, I had to work thirty hours a day down at the mill, I got up at 10 in the evening, half an hour before I went to bed, and every night my father would kill me and dance about on my grave." If you want something with a semblance of credibility, however, you'll have to get more specific. A good way to do this is to claim a person is prejudiced against you because you're a minority/woman/homosexual/Democrat/Republican/ too young/too old.... you get the point. A good way to do start this off is to say "You'd put more consideration into what I did if I was (younger, older, Republican, a Democrat, heterosexual, male, white) Then you can go on about all of the total assholes you knew that were chauvinist male pigs, KKK- qualifying racists, square old people, rebellious young punks, bleeding heart liberal pinkos, or dittohead NRA-brainwashed conservatives. Make sure that the actions of aforementioned assholes can all be blamed on the person you're flaming.

Technique #3- Pulling Rank
This is a very effective technique, because it has the capacity to actually INCREASE your credibility and, although it depends on a great deal of non sequitor logic, is actually effective in impressing many people who are easily impressed and deficient in logic.

The many ways in which you can "pull rank" depend basically on your background (or what aspects of your background you want to make up and lie about). There are three basic ways to pull rank: age, position, and connections.

Age is frequently used, because it is something many people have. For example, in fandoms where there is a cross-generational appeal (such as Beatles fans), the older fans will often use their age as a weapon against the younger. They might say, "Why, you cannot truly be a fan unless you know what it felt like to have seen the Beatles when they were on Ed Sullivan," thereby ruling out anything the younger person says as irrelevent.

People may also use their position as evidence that their statements are irrefutable truth. For example, an English teacher may claim irrefutable superiority in all arguments regarding interpretation of a specific work by virtue of his or her career choice and the diploma hanging on his or her wall. I once knew a teacher who wouldn't have let Steinbeck himself argue with her interpretation of Of Mice and Men...

Lastly, one may claim irrefutable knowledge based on your connections. While this is generally the most non sequitor of all the methods of "pulling rank", it often works to dazzle people at your superiority to the extent of ignoring that small detail. For example, if you have had any aquaintance with a celebrity of some sort, join a newsgroup or mailing list devoted to that person. Once you make sure that everyone is aware of your connections, you can use them to make sure you come out ahead in every argument, whether on-topic or off-topic.

Technique #4- Insulting "jokes"
This is a method in which you downright insult your antagonist-- and get away with it! You may well ask, "How is this done?". Well, I intend to explain just that!

Make sure your insult contains either a huge amount of sarcasm (such as an obviously fake compliment) or some humorous merit (or some semblance of humor-- actual potential to make someone laugh is irrelevant). That way, there is no good reply your antagonist can make. Any attempt to reply seriously allows you to explain that he/she obviously has no sense of humor that he/she cannot recognize that said comment was a joke.

Technique #5- Irrelevant Comments
Irrelevant comments serve to portray you as a Noble, Upstanding Person and/or to portray your antagonist as a No Good, Low Down Worthless Bastard. These comments are easy to come by, as they don't necessarily need to have any relevance to the Topic at Hand.

Some possible irrelevant comments to defend yourself include:

• I am trying to raise my children to be kind, compassionate, and love God.
• I am a very competent (insert profession here) trying to live as a productive member of society.
• I am very nice to my pet dog/cat/hamster/guinea pig/goldfish/iguana/alligator
  
  Some possible irrelevant comments to attack the other person include:
• any attacks on spelling or grammar
• attacks on the person's lack of open-mindedness
• attacks that twist your antagonists words to mean something else, allowing you to attack him/her on that basis
  

1. You’ve read something and you think it’s fairly ridiculous. Now it’s time to compose that perfect flame. Here’s a few tips to consider before you click that “post” button.

2. Read what you are responding to once or twice more. This is very important if you plan to pick apart details of the post. It’s very important you get your facts right, or you are leaving yourself wide open to being ridiculed and counter flamed. If it’s a long post, or it was posted a couple of replies ago, quote parts of it as you respond, so there is no confusion as to what you are replying to.

3. Remain calm. If it was the posters intention to antagonize you, don’t let him get away with it. This is sometimes difficult to do through an online forum. You can’t express yourself through body language as you could in real life. All you can do is be very careful with the wording of your post.

4. Use lots of big words so that everyone knows how brilliantly intelligent you are.

5. Being patronizing or sarcastic can be fun. But the best flames are the subtle ones weaved into legitimate points of argument.

6. Read what you have written before you post it. Use the “preview” button to see how it will look on the forum before it’s actually there. Have you said everything you want to, and is the tone of your post appropriate?

7. Put on someone else’s shoes. Not literally of course, but read your post back to yourself as though you were the person receiving it. This will help you to ensure your flame is well founded, and to sample its effect.

8. Play two moves ahead. Imagine what possible responses users might post to your flame. Is it flame proof itself?

9.Don’t be surprised/ shocked/upset if someone flames you back. This is a flame war forum after all.

10. REMEMBER: You don’t have to flame them. It’s NOT mandatory. It’s simply an option. If you’ve written your response and it’s fairly flaky, don’t bother posting it. You’re leaving yourself WIDE OPEN to a flame war you won’t win.

11. It’s not the winning it’s the taking part. Don’t be a sore loser. Admit defeat if you are defeated. An honorable member is a popular one, and you’ll live to flame another day.

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