I think my language nerdiness is coming out again...

Hello again, flist! I know it's weird to see me post again so soon lol, but I've just had an interesting discussion with arrowwhiskers, and it's made me curious on something that I had just assumed as fact for the entirety of my fandom life:

What does "wank" (and also, "flaming/flamewars") specifically mean to you? Can you use it to describe drama and arguments that occur offline, or is it an online-only phenomenon?

More specifically, we're wondering whether characters in a fic can "wank" (and no, I'm not talking about masturbation... perverts :P), and if the tons of bullshit found in rl politics/political campaigns and such could also qualify as "wank".

To explain my own thoughts on the matter, I'm just going to copy and paste the conversation we had:

( under a cut because lol long )