Online communication

Flame wars, according to a blog I read by Alexandre, "are those personal confrontations which happen so frequently online." These 'flame wars' are caused by a breakdown in communication. Alexandre mentions that online communication, because it lacks the mechanisms of personal speech, causes ambiguity in communication. In my linguistics class, we learned that such ambiguity is called script ambiguity and is caused when we write the way we speak. without the tonnes of ordinary speech, script ambiguity makes communicating online difficult. This is especially true if we are trying to communicate in a unfamiliar online territorial network. An example of this is myspace.com that connects a huge network of friends. I just recently started a myspace account and I am finding that communicating can be difficult, especially when I a messaging friends-even loved ones. Alexandre mentioned that this may be because "there is no direct relationship between an online persona and social identity an (offline) daily life." I find this expression to hold some truth whenever I am trying to find the right words to use in my messages because the people I am messaging are detached from there normal self. Myspace.com provides a milieu that is unlike any kind of reality I have ever known and I can see how a flame war might occur. Often, offline, we take comments from people more personally, but while online, it becomes imperative for us to not take anything too personal, but there is still, always that fear, when sending a message, that I might hurt the person receiving my message feeling's. Does anyone else have simmilar thoughts?