They usually express some controversial statement in a manner designed to annoy or anger others. Electronic conversations appear to be prone to misrepresentation, sudden and rapidly escalating hostility between the participants, and a weird kind of implosion when the conversants express their anger with sulking silence. This may be because, unlike face to face conversation, electronic medium contains no visual cues. The letter characters cannot carry body language or tone and are therefore prone to misunderstanding. Writers tend to bungle their attempts at sarcasm and the readers tend to bungle their detection.
Flame wars can involve dozens of people and can go on for weeks or even months.
Most end purely because the participants grow bored of the topic. Issues which tend to ignite flame wars include abortion, gun control, homosexuality, freedom of speech, and religion. Techniques such as Emoticons and various acronyms have been devised in an attempt to overcome this growing problem of misunderstood communication. Emoticons are nothing more than characters that look like a face when viewed side-ways. They are commonly inserted at the end of a sentence that is meant to be interpreted as sarcasm or more generally are used when the writer fears that his words will be miscontrued.