Have there always been topic of the week flamewars here?

[More Than A Feeling]

I joined in the middle of primary season, so I caught the tail end of those fights, but I am talking about before that. Were we always so concerned with religion, for example?

[thecorster]

1. interesting question... i'm fairly new here

and I want to know, too.

[RandomKoolzip]

2. There've always been religious flamewars, and they've always been

vicious. The week Saddam was captured was a weird one (search the archives.), not to mention the week Nick Berg was killed....

Yup, twas ever thus (except now X10)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. Flame wars I recall...

Nick Berg was probably the most vile and incoherent. It was the first time I ever put a person on my ignore list.

The tsunami conspiracy theory wars were probably the dumbest.

The entire 2004 election results forum was, and continues to be a low-level flame war.

9/11 has its own forum just to keep the kooks out of the general population.

I think there's a difference between those and the Schiavo thing, though. This, it seems to me, is an issue that hits close to home for a lot of people. It's confusing, complicated, frustrating, and has so many different important aspects (media bias, the fundies, 24-hour-cable coverage, hypocrisy, even separation of powers for God's sake!) I don't put it in the same category as the Nick Berg nonsense, or the election results, even though the Schiavo threads were essentially big repeats of each other save pearls of wisdom scattered here and there.

I'm living outside the US now, and DU was my window into this particular event. Even the redundant threads were useful to me.

Losing a family member is hard. I lost my father five months ago. People are naturally going to have very strong feelings about losing their husband, wife, child, or parent. It's doubly difficult when you've got to make the decision. Quite frankly, I understand both sides in the Schiavo thing, even though I've got some choice words for both sides which I'll refrain from saying here.

There's a big difference between that sort of issue, and this idiotic gibberish that seems to come forth every day, just begging for reasoned rebuttal, which always turns into a pissing contest over who's got the most Ph.Ds or highly-medicated former CIA officers on their side.

Well, I've lost track of where I was going with this post, so I'll end it there.

[K-W]

3. Religion is in the news, its like the primaries.

Before that, in my time here, there were isolated threads, but when the topic of current events or politics goes near, religion, abortion, primaries, etc things get hectic

[whistle]

4. Gun control flamewars also....

[QC]

5. We have always had spirited discussions here, but...

they have gotten much nastier as the place has gotten so much bigger (and, in some ways, dumber). In addition, bitterness over the election has been a factor--it has engendered a lot of misdirected rage.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

13. Well...

I've noticed a lot of the people engaging in the most vile flaming are 1000+ post-count donating old-timers. Two of them, usually, fighting with each other. I take your point about the election, though. Put it this way, I had the opportunity to leave the country right after the election and I did. The election made it easy. Quite frankly, I'm glad that I'm gone. The rest of the world sort of looks on curiously at the US as it degenerates into gibberish-thought.

[seabeyond]

6. theology has become our rule

religion is gonna be talked about. whne there isnt religion on the board, it will mean religion got out of our government

[depakid]

7. Short answer- yes

Though it hasn't always been the "topic of the week." For a while there, it was any mention of Ralph Nader (doesn't seem to matter what he says). That would ignite a Green - Dem flame war everytime.

[On the Road]

8. Abolutely Right -- Only the Topics Change

as new coalitions are formed and new subjects come up.

I've always thought DU does a great job of allowing disagreement and discussion while suppressing flamebait. Unmoderated message boards usually degenerate into toxic people yelling at each other while everyone else flees the bad vibes.

[Dutch]

9. Yup!

I fondly remember the flamewar that was raging when I arrived here, it was over generalisations about the South (All southerners are racists, no only some southerners are racists, no actually its northerners who are racist against southerners, no all northerners are the re-incarnation of Abe Lincoln and spend all day playing Phil ochs songs to Bangladeshi orphans yadda yadda...) But that actually represented brief respite from the epic Green v Dem flame war that raged for about 2 years after the 2000 selection. Sometimes the flamewars aren't even remotely topical- anyone else remember the mighty Capitalism v Socialism blow-up of Christmas 2002? Ah, good times.

[thecorster]

11. wow. i think message boards are

both really weird and really fun. weird because we're just a bunch of people scattered all over the place, giving our opinions to one another and having these in depth interactions... and fun for the same reasons. :)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

14. But at least the Greens vs. Dems thing was legitimate.

There was a serious tactical and ideological issue at stake. the '02 socialism row was just intellectual masturbation.

[Leilani]

10. Sometimes it's topic of the day flamewars!

EOM