Where did the term “demon thread” come from? A lot more people are going to be familiar with the term “flame war”. (A search engine will confirm it is a common phrase, and that it is essentially synonymous with what you are calling “demon thread”.). If you want to distinguish one from the other, you should have a good reason to do so, and you should tell the reader. Otherwise I’d just say “flame war”.
Short answer: I made up the term because it seemed to best describe what was happening.
I feel like the connotations are a bit different. Flame Wars feel like something where there’s no good will at all, nothing but pure angry yelling. The most important new bits of information in this article are about the Demon Seed—how a well intentioned discussion among intellectual truthseekers can nonetheless turn into some weird monstrosity, often while people are still earnestly trying to communicate and accomplish something good.
“Flame” connotes pure warfare.
“Demon” connotes some kind of malevolent force that’s twisting good intentions into evil.
I should probably at least reference flame wars in the post (partly to distinguish them and maybe just for the SEO)
[Edit: added a note about it]
[Edit 2: it turns out the current SEO for “Demon Thread” mostly refers to Java processes, which isn’t great. It may be that I want to change the jargon to something more standard, but I do still feel Flame War doesn’t quite capture it)]
Agreement that ‘flame war’ seems to put the blame on the individuals more than ‘demon thread’ which suggests there was some sort of attractor pulling the humans toward a bad place.
Where did the term “demon thread” come from? A lot more people are going to be familiar with the term “flame war”. (A search engine will confirm it is a common phrase, and that it is essentially synonymous with what you are calling “demon thread”.). If you want to distinguish one from the other, you should have a good reason to do so, and you should tell the reader. Otherwise I’d just say “flame war”.
EDIT: Maybe “malignant demon thread” = “flame war”?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flame%20war
Short answer: I made up the term because it seemed to best describe what was happening.
I feel like the connotations are a bit different. Flame Wars feel like something where there’s no good will at all, nothing but pure angry yelling. The most important new bits of information in this article are about the Demon Seed—how a well intentioned discussion among intellectual truthseekers can nonetheless turn into some weird monstrosity, often while people are still earnestly trying to communicate and accomplish something good.
“Flame” connotes pure warfare.
“Demon” connotes some kind of malevolent force that’s twisting good intentions into evil.
I should probably at least reference flame wars in the post (partly to distinguish them and maybe just for the SEO)
[Edit: added a note about it]
[Edit 2: it turns out the current SEO for “Demon Thread” mostly refers to Java processes, which isn’t great. It may be that I want to change the jargon to something more standard, but I do still feel Flame War doesn’t quite capture it)]
Agreement that ‘flame war’ seems to put the blame on the individuals more than ‘demon thread’ which suggests there was some sort of attractor pulling the humans toward a bad place.
How about “demon war” (he said, without putting much thought into it)?