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Dirty Fighting on the FirstClass System

If you've spent any time in the busier social conferences, you've probably noticed the high quality of invective, innuendo and full-blooded abuse on show there. Like many new students, eager to dip a toe into this exciting and challenging field of academic discourse, you are probably wondering "How can I start?", "How is it done?" and, most important of all, "How can I measure up to the established giants of the sport?"

Well, don't despair! As a long-term veteran of such conferences as International Affairs, Men's Issues and Chat, I have made a study of these techniques and I can now reveal my findings to you, the eager novice.

Remember, OU FirstClass conferences are moderated. If you go for outright abuse, your messages will be blatted into oblivion and, ultimately, you will be made read-only. Anyway, flaming is so-o-o last century. There are far better ways of triumphing over your enemies and making the other contributors tremble in awe.

1. Make it clear to everyone that you are far, far too grown-up and intelligent to be involved in a flamewar, even as you are actually fighting it. Here are some good strategies for you to try:

• Tell your rival you are worried about their mental health and suggest, solicitously, that they should "get help".
• Use the old "Why are you prolonging this argument?" ploy. A good variation, if you are a mod, is to reply publicly to your opponent and insist that their reply to you must be made in a private e-mail "in accordance with the C-o-C". I have seen this one carried on for five or six iterations by particularly unhinged mods.
• Mention your close personal friendship with the OUSA controller.
• Make in-jokes no-one else will get.
• Point out that this is a university not a primary school.
• If you decide to continue the argument by private e-mail, make sure you post a message to the group saying 'answered by private e-mail' or some such, to show how grown up you are, while simultaneously showing everyone that you won't let this rapscallion have the final word.

2. Go for sympathy. For example, try one of the following:

• Say "You're twisting my words!"
• or: "It's political correctness gone mad!"
• or: "Stop Trolling Me!"
• Go on and on about your personal problems and imply that your opponent is deliberately exploiting your weakness to score points off you.
• Make much of any imagined insults or implied threats. Mention in your résumé that someone has been bullying, threatening or harrassing you. Tell everyone else as well. Repeatedly. Like a constantly dripping tap.
• Thank others for their messages of support to you at this difficult time.

3. Overbearing pomposity is a good strategy which everyone enjoys. Here are some good examples:

• Correct your opponent's spelling. The best way of doing this is to quote their message in full and insert "(sic)" after each error.
• Better yet, hint that he/she has made 'a howler' of some sort but don't say what it is. If they are insecure enough, this will paralyse them with self-doubt.
• Cast aspersions on his/her choice of newspaper.
• Quote Latin. This is the nuclear option of the pompous flame warrior's arsenal. Good choices are "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" (if you're arguing with a moderator) or one of the many variants of "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" (if you read a Margaret Atwood novel once and want the world to know it). However, there is a very severe danger in this tactic. Since you aren't a Latin scholar (I'm guessing here!) you will need to copy the words very, very carefully, because if you get even one letter wrong you can bet some smug git who did latin at school will come along and expose you as a fraud.

4. Become an expert in legal issues. The very least you can do is to quote relevant sections of the Spirit of Conference, but that's for amateurs. To be a real conference Lawyer you need to:

• Mention libel law and hint darkly that you will sue them based on what they've written in a FirstClass message. Yes, of course you will!
• Make some ludicrous point about "free speech" to defend your god-given right to use the word "nigger", or to make a joke about two Irishmen who go into a pub. Top quote in this regard: "This is Academia, where free speech is preached but not practised".
• If you're feeling frisky, adopt a legal tone and refer to other students as Miss So-and-So or Mr Such-and-Such. There are fewer things that impress people more than a first year law student imitating a character from a John Grisham novel.

5. Get Techie. You could, for example:

• Overawe someone with technical jargon. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it yourself.
• Mutter threats about your opponent's IP address or your intention to hack their website.
• Deride their choice of browser/ISP/operating system.
• Talk down to your opponent.

6. Use the complaints procedure. Having friends in high places will help with this. If you are planning some mild fighting it pays to get chummy with the OUSA controller, but if you really want to wreak havoc you'll need the kind of protection that can only be bought by shagging a member of the LTS team. Anyway, generally speaking, the two most important things to remember are:

• The OUSA allows anonymous complaints to protect people from harassment. This is all well and good because it allows you, the budding flame warrior, to lodge endless time-wasting complaints to the OUSA controller. She loves getting these. They are her favourite things in her inbox apart from ads for generic viagra and bounced virus messages.
• On the other hand, when someone lodges an anonymous complaint about you, get angry. Hint that you know who it is. Denounce their anonymity as cowardly and rant about the freedom of information act. If you are a conference lawyer, add that in this great country of ours, we are innocent until proven guilty. Ensure that everyone knows that you are a poor, innocent victim of Big Brother and try and get everyone on your side.

7. Just lose the plot completely. This is a high-risk strategy since it could mean a ban, but if you are losing, sometimes taking the gloves off can be quite cathartic! Getting good and drunk before posting is always a good start. Then try one of the following:

• Call your opponent a nazi (if right wing) or a fellow-traveller (if a leftie). In the International Affairs Conference, you may substitute 'Zionist' and 'Anti-semite' as appropriate.
• If your opponent is a member of a minority group (e.g., they are irish, muslim, or gay...) then post lots of jokes about that group. Ideally, these should be close enough to racism to irritate your opponent but not quite bad enough to get unapproved. Then, when they protest you can tell them they are being PC and that they have no sense of humour.
• Claim a history of collaboration between your opponent and the mods.
• Better yet, claim that the mods are in some way romantically entangled with your opponent.
• Start e-mailing your chosen stalkee off-FirstClass.
• Make a website dedicated to them, preferably in some really mad format such as white times new roman on a black background. If you can get plenty of spelling mistakes in there too, so much the better! Don't admit to having made it though!
• Submit their name at Urbandictionary.com with some insulting definition and tell everyone about it.