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At first he was profoundly disturbed, each flame feeding his natural teenage belief that he was inadequate...both as a movie reviewer and as a person...you know, teenage angst. No matter how much we assured him that ALL reviewers receive strong disagreements with their opinions, that the Web was a very open and free forum, encouraging lowbrow types to vent their spleen, and that he got many more encouraging and praising letters...or simple disagreements without the all the unkind references to his ancestry...than he did flames...he still found them disturbing to deal with. he also had trouble either ignoring them or answering them in an appropriate manner.

Then, in one of those flashes of intuition that comes with experimenting in any new medium, I hit upon a particularly apt solution to Roger's problem, using the Internet way. I thought of it thinking of various other approaches. I could answer the flames in his stead...no, that would teach him nothing. I could snitch off the "offenders" to their ISPs...no, I don't like snitching, especially when the assholes are merely "doing their own thing!"...sticks and stones and all that. I could teach Roger how to respond in kind...no, that would expose Roger to having his own nastiness exposed and sully the wholesome sixteen year old entrepreneur image that Netscape was attracted to.

That's it! Why not publish the very words of the flamers...verbatim, with all the misspellings, profanity and bad grammar intact? We could also include a "mailto" (an HTML tag which pops up a pre-addressed email form making it easy to write to the targeted individual...almost every page on our site contains one or more of these) which would be addressed to the flamer. This way, Roger's much more numerous fans could deal with the scofflaw for him, sending him an automatic "cc" of each response.

I ran this idea past Roger and he, rising to the majesty that only a teenager can muster...at least a teenager who watches Star Trek, the Next Generation...said, "Make it so!"

So I established a new feature on his site, an HTML page entitled the Hall of Flame. We already had some particularly egregious examples to post, and, within a day or so, the flamers were BEGGING to be removed! They had been receiving such a huge volume of counter flames...some couched in the same nasty language as their own...others simply calling them naughty boys...that they were reliving Roger's experience with a vengeance. I suspect that most of THEM were also teenagers subject to the same insecurities as Roger. Who else writes vulgar and profane letters to other teenagers they do not know?

Unfortunately, this story has an unhappy ending. One person, a male Las Vegas dancer, objected to Roger's bad review of Showgirls, and sent him a flame which we posted in the Hall of Flame. When he started receiving counter-flames, the man did not understand what was happening, thought Roger had mounted a vicious verbal terrorist campaign against him and began to make physical threats. This crossed my line as a parent, I did snitch him off to his ISP, using his own words as evidence, and got him thrown off the Net, at least by that ISP.

Furthermore, as time went on, the Hall of Flame became one of the most popular features of Teen Movie Critic, threatening to eclipse the main purpose of the site, to review movies from a teenage standpoint. Flamers began to compete to see who could get the most outrageous flame posted in the Hall of Flame. In short, the whole affair seemed to be spinning out of control.

So, I killed it. Removed it as though it had never been there and Roger began to use other means to deal with flames...mostly simply ignoring them. By now, he had become accustomed to the mix of email he was receiving and was so entranced with what was happening to him as he enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame, that he no longer got so upset by them anyway. I was never quite sure that I had done the right thing by removing the Hall of Flame. Every interviewer who ever talked with Roger thought it was an intriguing idea...often commenting about it in the published interview as though it still existed. Also, as I became more accustomed to the ways of the Web, I realized that the old Hollywood adage is correct here as well. Any publicity IS good publicity! Ask Matt Drudge.

As an Internet columnist, I too get my fair share of flames...not as many as Roger...movies seem to strike a primitive chord in people...but enough so that I too have had to devise strategies for dealing with them. I always answer every letter...once. But, there are "hangups"...people who insist on writing lengthy diatribes...which, if answered, spur yet more diatribes, usually only marginally related to what I originally wrote or my response to their first email.

I hesitated at first to publish this particular column, fearing that I would be giving away my "secrets" for dealing with obnoxious email. Then I realized that, just as I may have been wrong to kill the Hall of Flame, I probably have nothing to worry about concerning the way I "privately" answer letters. After all, if the flamers are enterprising enough (and some of them have been), they can publicize whatever I say anyway.

My favorite tactic to deal with "hangups," which I use sparingly, is sent as about the third response to flamers that will not go away. It reads (roughly):

"Since flaming is a type of mental masturbation I suggest you grasp your teenie weenie betwixt thumb and forefinger and do it the old fashioned way. It is much more satisfying."

This usually causes a REALLY, REALLY sputtering response, since insecure males (I have never had a flame from a female!), the type who engage in flaming, are generally obsessed with their penis size (I am guessing SMALL). To their inevitable response, calling me a pervert or whatever...I try...

"You really need the last word?"

To the response that this calls up...

"Last word..."

Then the next gets...

"Word..."

And finally, I "bounce" all subsequent email from that person, with a somewhat complicated move...which, by the way, almost always works, since the dildoes seldom "get it." It goes like this. I have a separate copy of EUDORA.INI, the configurations file for my email handling software, which has no return address or sender configured. An icon sits on my desktop which, using a MS-DOS batch file, swaps in this bogus INI file. Then I bring up Eudora and reconfigure the return address and sender to be the address and name of the flamer himself, put the words "Unwanted email: return to sender" in the subject, copy his text and paste it into this letter, and send it back to him. Now, a sophisticated techie would see through this ruse immediately. But, as I said flamers are usually NOT sophisticated...in any way. So they go for it. If they try to "reply" to this ruse, they will get into an infinite loop, which they appear not to be able to get out of, all replies being "returned" to them.

A recent exception to this rule is the Dave Rand (of MAPS) to whom I refer in one of my "How Can You Laugh..." columns (See: Punishing the victims! - II). He is a truly tedious schmuck, a member of on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-imous, who is nearly impervious to any type of criticism, much less flaming. A real dedicated true believer in his (and Paul Vixie's) technocratic and vigilante war on spam. Of course, both state.net and I have already found ways to get around his silly scheme (and to stop most attacks on the server, but not enough to satisfy the Star Chamber of MAPS), as I am sure most spammers have as well. But, he persists in trying to "convince" me of the righteousness of their cause. For example, I sent him an advanced copy of today's column, to see if I could get him to give me any more nuggets to publish (since his own words make my case for me), but he responded in typical arrogant fashion, sending me back a copy of the column with his tedious prose inserted "in the proper places" and "demanding" that I publish it verbatim along with the column. It actually contained no new information, just a rehash of his previous rationalizations and an accusation (well founded) that I resort to profanity and one (off the wall) that I use racial slurs (presumedly my reference to Klan "errors" in my column..."Well he was just another nigger!") showing that the man does not understand irony, even such heavy handed stuff. So I "bounced" it.

Of course, Dave, being a techie, DID see through my little scheme and sent me yet another copy of the stupid letter, with the insertion at the top something to the effect of "Now, don't you pretend that you did not get this..."

So I "bounced" it again.

Finally, when he did exactly the same thing once again, I "bounced" it with note:

"This email has been returned to sender because the sender has been found to be on the Ass Hole List. To get on this list, you must repeatedly show that you are devoid of morality, unable to understand simple reason and possibly mentally ill. Only a note from your mother will get you off this list."

That one did the trick.

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