Formosa's law is an unofficial rule of Usenet groups, coined by David Formosa, that states, "The truly insane have enough on their plates without us adding to it." That is, flaming someone with an obvious mental problem can't make it any better. Formosa first came up with this rule for the net abuse newsgroups, which had many trolls and spammers, but also many people who got into trouble for not understanding or being able to deal with others effectively. Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...

It is common, both on the Internet and in real life, for people to to amuse themselves and others by ridiculing people who spout bogus nonsense or engage in silly behavior, on the basis that their opponents have invited ridicule by their behavior, usually by exhibiting some combination of stupidity, hypocrisy, and pomposity. However, in some cases, the behavior is the result of actual mental illness or dysfunction, rather than mere boneheadedness. Formosa's law says that if someone's weird behavior is caused by actual pathology, it's inappropriate to increase their suffering by adding ridicule. Ridicule should be reserved for people who really should know better than to do the stupid stuff that they do. For other meanings of this phrase (book and album titles etc. ... Stupidity is the quality or condition of being stupid, lacking intelligence, or having a low IQ. This quality can be attributed to both an individual himself (John Smith is stupid) or his actions, words or beliefs (John Smiths policies are stupid). ... Look up Hypocrisy on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have morals or virtues that one does not truly possess or practice. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ...

This law is most often used as an explanation for not engaging a legitimately mentally-disturbed individual in a flamewar or hostile discussion, or encouraging such actions. It is often cited on alt.usenet.kooks as a reason not to issue a "Kook-of-the-Month Award", and is also often cited as a companion to Godwin's Law. alt. ... Godwins law (also Godwins rule of Nazi analogies) is an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. ...

External links

• The Jargon File entry for Formosa's Law

This article is based in part on the Jargon File, which is in the public domain. The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. ...