Forum Warz

October 12, 2009 1:39 PM

For comedic purposes, I'm looking for flame wars on obscure and trivial subjects regarding consumer products. The idea came from video games and the intense passion around consoles (Xbox 360 vs. PS3, etc.), so I'd like to put together examples from other areas; e.g. cars, cameras, high-end audio, violin bow resin. Ideal examples would be highly emotional, petulant and way out of proportion to the issue at hand. Bonus points for posts that take perceived slights against the product as a personal attack or escalate into threats.
posted by mattholomew to society & culture (38 comments total)

First thing that popped into my head: The Loudness War
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:45 PM on October 12

CPB, that's a great example of flame war fodder but I would like specific examples from message boards with lots of nerd rage.
posted by mattholomew at 2:01 PM on October 12

Go to 'videofitness.com' and do a search for either 'Cathe Flame War' (example here http://forum.videofitness.com/showthread.php?t=136602&highlight=cathe+flame&page=10)
or 'Wendilee.' Cathe fans tend to be very passionate and can get very defensive when people post reviews or comments which are critical of Cathe. Wendilee is now out out business but at the time was such a big inciter of flame wars that all threads about her on VF are locked and even mentioning her name is not permitted.
posted by JoannaC at 2:11 PM on October 12

JoannaC, I've never heard of those terms at all which is awesome! Thanks!
posted by mattholomew at 2:13 PM on October 12

The recent FPP over IKEA changing the type font used in its catalogs.
posted by applemeat at 2:18 PM on October 12

Hop over to Banjo Hangout, and have a look at the Setup and Repair Forums. People can, and do, argue for days over the minutiae of Pre-War tone rings, over Archtops vs Flatheads, and the supposed Holy Grail of Tone - National Finger Picks; tiny pieces of metal which now change hands in the hundreds of dollars.

And this is all about banjos after all; they're supposed to sound like crap ...
posted by scruss at 2:27 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Any time there's a Mac-related thread in the blue you've got about a 50-50 shot of it turning into that kind of discussion.
posted by deadmessenger at 2:27 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Any time there's a Mac-related thread in the blue you've got about a 50-50 shot of it turning into that kind of discussion.

Heh. search for "iPhone" and "battery" and you'll find a good one.
posted by Artw at 2:31 PM on October 12

I was searching on how to get out of my tmobile contract today I found myself totally sucked into reading this crazy comment thread.
posted by yfatah at 2:31 PM on October 12

Here's a rather nice little thread about whether Clerks II should be considered a box office success. It gets fairly heated until Kevin Smith himself enters the fray… and then it becomes really really freaking heated.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 2:36 PM on October 12 [3 favorites]

You should look into some of the flame wars over 3d software, such as the arguments here and here. Arguments over the best 3d software package, the best renderer, etc. abound.
posted by cleverevans at 2:37 PM on October 12

The Wikipedia Lamest edit wars page is a goldmine for this kind of stuff.
posted by zsazsa at 2:37 PM on October 12 [7 favorites]

Setting aside that visiting 4chan is almost never a good idea, you might try the various interest-specific boards there.
posted by Monster_Zero at 2:52 PM on October 12

I guess it is not a particularly "consumer-y" product, but fights between Emacs and VI fanatics come to blows more often than not. It really strikes a chord with the text-editing *nix crowd.
posted by milqman at 2:55 PM on October 12

There are some world-class flamewars at the Harmony Central forums, much like those Scruss describes. Some players are Gibson all the way, some are devoted to Fender, some disdain high-end guitars altogether. The high-end guitarists look down upon the players of "cheap Korean imports".

Some of the guitar-related minutiae that are debated at length include:

Tube Amps VS Solid State Amps VS Digital Modelers

How X does/doesn't effect guitar tone, where X is something insignificant like cables, picks, or tuning pegs. This usually breaks down into someone claiming they can "hear the difference" and are thus better than those who can't.

Technical virtuosity VS Songwriting ability

There's more. So much more.
posted by Anephim at 3:01 PM on October 12

Allow me to introduce you to fandom wank, I'm sure you'll get along like a house on fire.
posted by litleozy at 3:08 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

In the Harry Potter world, this was before book 6 came out: Harry/Hermione vs. Ron/Hermione. The issue was settled in book 6 which led to a meltdown.
posted by asras at 3:40 PM on October 12

There's the beginnings of a nice one brewing over at BoardGameGeek about the reissue of Space Hulk being too highly ranked and getting artificially low ratings by users trying to "battle the hype". Too soon to see if it will get really amusing. To put things in a little perspective, Go is at number 36 on their list, and Chess is at number 218, slightly below such classics as "Dungeon Twister" and "Hey!, That's My Fish!"
posted by ecurtz at 4:08 PM on October 12 [3 favorites]

The DS Sucks
The PSP Sucks
The Wii Sucks
The Playstation 3 Sucks
The Xbox 360 Sucks
posted by azarbayejani at 4:24 PM on October 12

canon vs nikon
posted by chalbe at 4:40 PM on October 12

Brand New has a few spats back and forth regarding logos.
Any and all Livejournal communities are a good bet too, even their own maintenance journal is full of outragggeeeeeeee.
posted by june made him a gemini at 5:08 PM on October 12

Not "consumer products" per se, but just google "vim vs. emacs".
posted by orthogonality at 5:14 PM on October 12

One of my very favorite was on Craigslist over whether Craig existed or not. I know he's not a product, but I was in tears over the hilarity of trying to prove to disbelievers that Craig actually existed. A very old thread that made it on Best of Craigslist.
posted by effluvia at 5:27 PM on October 12

Oh boy sleep! That's where I'm a Viking!
posted by mhum at 5:27 PM on October 12 [3 favorites]

Yarn. Folks argue about acrylic vs wool, superwash vs natural wool, pooling vs non pooling.
posted by bilabial at 8:03 PM on October 12

Yar, seconding yarn. Or needles, even. Wood vs. metal, circular vs. double-pointed. The forum would be Ravelry.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:21 PM on October 12

The Nikon vs. Canon flamewar would be held on DPReview.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:23 PM on October 12

Rotaries vs. pistons. (hello RX-7 fans)
posted by artdrectr at 10:49 PM on October 12

Bath and body products - especially debating the merits of various e-tailers.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:07 PM on October 12

Nikon vs. Canon is kiddie-pool stuff.

Search old usenet and photo.net posts for Contax MM. Oh, man, could that old SLR system bring out the hate, and always had a stalwart bunch of rich idiots, impoverished artists and serious gearheads to man the barricades in its defense. Leica to a lesser extent, because the idiots were richer and the artists serious and the gearheads impoverished.

Then there's Schneider vs. Rodenstock, or Schneider vs. Nikon in large format. Linhoff vs. Horseman technical field cameras. Gossen vs. Sekonic vs. Minolta light meters. Velvia vs. Kodachrome, medium format vs. 35mm.

Hell, 645 vs. Square vs. 6x7 medium format - that one will get you hours of impassioned rage at the "wrong" image size.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:57 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Here's one where the Contax G and Leica M users duke it out.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:05 AM on October 13

Back in 1992, someone asked a very similar question ("Famous flame wars, examples please?") on Usenet, I think in alt.folklore.computers. Several responses to it listed and described the more famous flamewars of the time. Here it is. Allegedly, the "first" flamewar was over a BSD tape, and Bill Joy was involved. However, this was disputed by some, and references are made to nastiness dating back to the mid-80s on ARPANET.

Unfortunately, I don't think Google's archives of Usenet go back far enough to capture many of the exchanges people are referring to there. 1990 or so seems to be about the beginning of 'recorded history,' with exceptions here and there for specific groups or threads that people saved on purpose. (Which is too bad; the "why do women use more toilet paper than men?" flameout of 1985 sounds like it would make amusing reading.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:15 AM on October 13 [1 favorite]

On the topic of "What if Jupiter became a second sun?" I bookmarked this thread awhile back and it still makes me laugh. For the good stuff, start reading what a user called Kamal Talwar posts in the most confidently misinformed way possible. Watch as the astrogeeks give him hell. The whole thread is comedy gold.
posted by quadog at 12:28 AM on October 13

Also, rec.guns has seen some nice ones over the years. I don't know if you'd call them "flamewars" per se, but there are lots of ongoing disagreements that come up from time to time and tend to generate long, sometimes-heated threads, often reminiscent of PC/Mac arguments. E.g.:

9mm versus .45 ACP
M-16/AR-15 versus AK-47 (and here, and probably 100 other places besides)
Revolver versus semiauto (also here, and here)

These are different from the "flamewars" categorized in the thread I linked to previously. Most of those were particularly vicious discussions about trivial subjects, which blew out of proportion because of the clashing personalities of the participants and general Internet asshattery. The rec.guns ones are typical of any discussion forum that focuses on technical topics, in that they're representative of underlying, widespread differences of opinion within the community. Most of them are actually well-mannered, but at the end of the day nothing is really settled, and they just come up over, and over ... and over.

Carrying on in that vein: in some audiophile forums, the issue of A/B or "blind" testing leads to such nasty arguments that it's a verboten subject. (E.g.: typical 244-post thread from rec.audio.high-end on the subject, beginning from an obviously flamebaity post. Another one.)

It's tough to find specialized forums that don't have topics like that, honestly. I'm not sure it's an Internet thing, either; I can think of lots of offline contexts where folks have been ready to come almost to blows over what would seem to an outside observer to be ridiculous trivia, but is to them a gaping ideological chasm. It's all about how focused you are on the issue.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:44 AM on October 13 [1 favorite]

There was the flame war discussed by Shawn Elliot in a GFW podcast concerning whether it was appropriate to marry both Sonic and Knuckles at the same time or whether that would be perverse. However, I have not been able to locate the original forum discussion.
posted by rtimmel at 11:52 AM on October 13

Also, on the fiber arts front, and also in Ravelry.

Copyright.

See, knitting and crochet patterns get published. People borrow them.

And then those patterns get photocopied (yes, I did intentionally use a passive verb there) and distributed to a friend, a neighbor, a stranger on the bus.

Enormous fits of rage have erupted over discussions of the legality, morality, and extent of such activities.

So, the argument is not over what product you end up with, but how you acquire it.
posted by bilabial at 12:36 PM on October 13

Um, that would be,
people buy them.
posted by bilabial at 12:37 PM on October 13

Part of me wondered if this Ask is a joke! I actually run a site called "Forumwarz" and even though I have a mefi account this was pointed out to me by a colleague.

http://www.forumwarz.com

The site is a web game that simulates the very flamewars you're talking about. We have hundreds of fake web sites with tons of hilarious content related to exactly what you're asking for. The only difference is it's a parody game and not a catalog of such things on the net.

Still, if you're looking for "comedic purposes" it should be right down your alley!
posted by robinw at 2:37 PM on October 19