Well...that's the last time I bring that up...
"The Internet has given everybody in America a voice. For some reason, everybody decides to use that voice to bitch about movies."
Poor, innocent, hapless newbie wanders into a forum and wonders aloud if that guy in that show should be with that girl in that show. The forum erupts into flames, igniting all the boards that deal with the show, which ignites whole sections of the Internet into a blazing Inferno.
The poor, innocent, hapless newbie has opened the door, causing an Internet Backdraft.
It works like this: Controversial Event X occurs, resulting in flame wars, including ones spanning multiple forums. Internet vigilantes occur who muck up the issue even more into a morass of rumors. Eventually it gets to the point where people are so sick of flame wars about Event X, that this in turn causes flame wars conducted by those who want it to just die. Which it eventually does, sort of, in a smoldering-ember sort of way. Then some n00b gives it enough oxygen to make it flare up all over again.
This is also known as "Holy Wars"— Holden, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
. Trolls and Fan Dumb are drawn to to them like flies to a carcass. Mike Reed's Flame Warriors refers to this, when the metaphorical "door" is opened on purpose, as a Grenade. It is also why we have the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment, and one of the most frequent reasons for a trope page specifying No Real Life Examples, Please!. Some tropes and/or audience reactions are themselves this - which is why they are listed as Flame Bait.
The single item in common for these is that people outside the involved communities are astounded that anyone could care enough about the issue to get in any kind of argument about it at all, much less a big argument.
It sometimes leads to people saying "Pass the Popcorn."
Not to be confused with Internet Counterattack - That's when the internet acts as one to make someone in real life pay.
See also, Flame War, which is a common terminology for this trope, Flame Bait, a normal cause for this trope, and G.I.F.T.. See also this video from CollegeHumor, which sets the whole concept of this trope to a Billy Joel song,
By the way, no examples, please. Everything can cause this to an extent, whether it's on the Internet or not. Besides, having an examples section for this trope is just asking for vandalism, so let's just have a little list of related tropes below and keep it at that, shall we?
Related Pages
- 8.8
- Acceptable Targets
- All Issues Are Political Issues
- Americans Hate Tingle
- Apple of Discord
- Award Snub
- Ban on Politics
- Base-Breaking Character
- Berserk Button
- Bluenose Bowdlerizer
- Broken Base
- Cavemen vs. Astronauts Debate
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong
- Complaining about People Not Liking the Show
- Complaining About Shows You Don't Like
- Computer Wars
- Console Wars
- Contested Sequel
- Cultural Posturing
- Death of the Author
- Die for Our Ship
- Edit War
- Eternal September
- Fan Dumb
- Fan Hater
- Fandom Berserk Button
- Fandom Heresy
- Fandom Rivalry
- Fanon Discontinuity
- Flame War
- Flame Bait
- The Gadfly (especially when it crosses into troll territory or overlaps with it)
- G.I.F.T.
- Grammar Nazi
- Hate Dumb
- Hatedom
- Hit-and-Run Poster
- Hotlinked Image Switch
- Hype Backlash
- Internet Counterattack
- Misplaced Nationalism
- Nobody Ever Complained Before
- PC vs. Console
- Periphery Hatedom
- Public Medium Ignorance
- Real Women Don't Wear Dresses
- Sacred Cow
- Scapegoat Creator
- Scrub
- Serious Business
- Shipping Goggles
- Ship-to-Ship Combat
- Single-Issue Wonk
- "Stop Having Fun" Guys
- Suffers Newbies Poorly
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!
- Troll
- Unfortunate Implications
- Unpleasable Fanbase
- Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things
- ...and many, many others.
