We are Insert Appropriate Emotion to learn of your Insert Relation 's heroic death fighting the Insert Current Enemy . His dog tag and personal digital assistant will be returned to you shortly. Again, please accept our condolences. The very word makes a netizen's blood burn with fear. At the first hint of a flamewar, system administrators run to their disks to protect them from data overflow.
Flames lurk behind every post, and the only shield is a smiley and a killfile.
Some netizens swear by asbestos suits, but asbestos is no protection against virtual fire. Flamewars can erupt over things as silly as whether or not to split a newsgroup into multiple newsgroups, or over fightin' topics as ingrained in our society as abortion and gay's rights. Flamewars are noted, not for their intelligent debate, but for the insulting references to the other side. Flamewars can float, traveling from newsgroup to newsgroup like an unwanted relative, a virtual embodiment of Chaos, dying, like Lucifer, only to reappear unscathed in another part of the net. The FHF is undoubtedly responsible for more deaths than any other discussion on the net.