Lively, geeky history carried on in newsgroup threads of git.talk.flame

POST: Thunderstorms rock, by the way. Anyone who says otherwise is a commie f---ing oprah loving fascist anti-american terrorist supporting assclown neo nazi conservative f---twit p---y ass scared little momma's boy.

REPLY: You're a wannabe EAS major, aren't you?

Such is life in the volatile world of git.talk.flame, the semi-obscure newsgroup where students can talk about anything and everything without consequence or fear of reprisal from the administration.

Read a funny news story that you'd like to share? Angry about the latest dent in your car? Think your new professor is a hardass? Post about it here. But be warned: this is a no-censorship zone, so prepare yourself for a near-certain volley of vicious, obscene replies.

"I can say things there that I couldn't otherwise say in public situations without fear of consequences," said Kelly Lyons, a third-year Discrete Math major and a frequent poster to .flame.

"You are able to let go and destroy creatures that do not compute," said Alan Fay, a spring 2004 graduate in Computer Science.

.flame is an exercise in utter passion and impulsiveness. Posts range from pure name-calling to serious discussions to random quips. (One thread reads: "spoiler: darth vader is luke skywalker's father!!!" Another: "Caution: the iPod shuffle is NOT candy.")

Complaints on a variety of issues are also popular. "This can be anything, from the parking office, to professor's grading policies, to the quality of pot, or even to the nature of .flame itself," Fay said. "These people are often fat, wear glasses and never leave their room."

Some topics are technical, which, at an institute ruled by science and technology can become just as controversial as sociopolitical issues.

"[If] someone posts 'Linux sucks' or something, they'll get 10,000 people descending on them to tell them why they're wrong," said David Hilley, a Computer Science graduate student. "But...traditionally, people would rant about classes and the Tech shaft and you know how some professor was screwing them or some TA was an idiot or whatever."

Many threads include links to a variety of interesting websites, and some posts can garner hundreds of responses. Other topics vary wildly.

"A random user will occasionally burst onto the scene and proclaim some sort of opinion or viewpoint about the world," Fay said. "Of late, we've been getting lots of traffic from self-proclaimed Libertarians that advocate killing poor people."

Such controversial political and social issues are always hot. During the 2004 election season, the newsgroup erupted into a red vs. blue flame war.

The .flame newsgroup dates back several years to the era of Jim Greenlee, an instructor in the College of Computing reputed for offering some of the most difficult courses at Tech. In addition to .homework, .labs and other important class-specific newsgroups, Greenlee offered his students a .flame group as a venting forum.

"Flame wars happen on all kinds of newsgroups," Hilley said. "I guess Greenlee created it to keep people from saying that stuff on the regular [class] newsgroups."

The class-oriented .flame sites were eventually shut down, but the concept had grown in popularity among the student body, particularly CS majors. To carry on the trend, Bryan Kennedy, then a computer science TA, requested the creation of git.talk.flame.

The group's popularity has remained steady ever since. .flame's fan base consists largely of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering majors, but others-including faculty and employees from departments such as OIT and GTRI-frequent the group as well. According to longtime users, even Greenlee himself was notorious for posting to the group.

Over time, freshmen and sophomores discover the group and replace the graduating seniors who leave.

"I don't think many incoming freshmen learn about it directly," Hilley said. "Usually it's haphazardly or something....a reference on another newsgroup or something like that."

Users are expected to follow basic netiquette rules, regardless of the content of their posts. And any user who forgets and leaves himself logged into his terminal may find himself the victim of baggy pantsing.

"When someone leaves the terminal unlocked and walks away from it, you're supposed to go up and make a creative post using their account, talking about how they're wearing such baggy pants," Hilley said.

However, some users insist that .flame used to have a quality that is dying. Some point to lulls in posting while others cite the frequent degeneration of the discussion threads into insult wars.

"The respectable people that post on it...have graduated or moved on," Lyons said. "And the people that have been [replacing them]-I suppose I would be in that pool-are mostly just whiny little brats that just like to berate each other more than discuss like issues."

Others disagree, arguing that .flame is just as lively as it used to be, and it's a matter of perspective of the users. Ben Garrison, a first-year Computer Science graduate student, pointed out that many older users read the posts of inexperienced freshmen.

"They don't realize [that] they were the stupid people four years ago," Garrison said.

But most users agree that git.talk.flame is likely to persevere in some form or another, simply because it provides an entertaining outlet for the student body.

"I think that for a lot of people, especially CS majors, typing into a newsreader removes their inhibitions," Garrison said. "Some people act like jerks on the newsgroup, and you meet them in person, and they're really nice people."