Virtual rivalries

It’s a place where people “drink, and have a fishing problem,’’ mocks one anonymous poster on the online Urban Dictionary.

Hingham, on the other hand, is dismissed as a town “dominated by soccer moms wearing pink, yellow, and lime green’’ - a reference to the corporate headquarters of wealthy women’s clothier Talbots Inc., located in town.

Town rivalries haven’t faded away, they’ve gone virtual.

Now that every dot on a map is also an address in cyberspace, in a few clicks the world is at our doorstep. But old tensions and rivalries - mostly based on wealth, sports, or a prized (or despised) landmark - haven’t changed much.

The most obvious low blows still center on whether a town allegedly has too many rich residents - like Hingham and Wellesley - or too few - like Malden and Waltham.

And online or offline, “Meffa’’ still can’t get any respect. (Or anyone to pronounce its Rs, and some bloggers insist the city is called “MedFID.’’)

Newton is “Snewton’’ or “Shrink City,’’ based on its breathtaking ratios of licensed psychiatrists and psychologists (and not just that Jonathan Katz, creator of Comedy Central hero Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, really does live in Newton).

The creator of Urban Dictionary, Aaron Peckham, watches the suburban mud-slinging with some amusement.

The “slang dictionary’’ he founded a decade ago as a hobby during his freshman year at California Polytechnic State University now has approximately 4 million words and about 2,000 new submissions per day, with an army of volunteer editors sorting through it all.

Many of the most-read entries are about cities and towns around the world, written with emotions that run deep, Peckham said.

“People seem to love defining their hometowns and where they live and expressing something about how they experience that place,’’ he said.

In terms of town nicknames and insults, just about anything goes as long as it doesn’t libel a living person, he said.

Another online community growing in popularity is the so-called refugee sites - like Facebook pages gathering together people who grew up in a particular place or shared an experience.

On Facebook’s “Remember When? Growing up in Wellesley’’ group, described as a “place to unload your thoughts, memories, anecdotes about growing up in Wellesley,’’ comments are gentle and nostalgic about long-gone ice-cream parlors.

But other towns are the recipients of sharper social barbs. A Facebook group named simply “Scituate,’’ for example, defines itself as “all people from the little drunken town.’’

It has nearly 450 members. Another 378 people, mostly college students, have joined a similar Facebook group that calls itself “If it weren’t for Scituate, I wouldn’t know how to drink.’’

Brooke Harrington, a 22-year-old Scituate native, said she started the “If it weren’t for Scituate’’ group three years ago while in college in Boston as a joke.

“I guess it was something we could all bond over. We were all away from home and each other for the first time, and it was a fun way of staying connected.’’ Shortly after she set it up, hundreds of people - most of whom she had never met - joined up.

Her group is overwhelmingly 21-plus, and not really about drinking, said Harrington. “It’s just turned into a place where people talk about memories and the town,’’ she said.

In neighboring Norwell, there appears to be little interest in the staid Facebook general town information site.

But more than 100 Facebook users have joined a “Norwell needs a Wendy’s’’ group, launched by a local high school student.

Being a dull town is no protection in cyberspace, of course.

Urban Dictionary posters accuse the town of Needham of being so boring a police blotter might read: “baked goods mistaken for weapons.’’

And to the north, mild-mannered Melrose also gets the snarky Urban Dictionary treatment with that old call-and-response chestnut:

“I’m going up to Melrose.’’

“Why?’’

Peckham regards the material included in Urban Dictionary - much of it submitted by anonymous posters - as the “anti-Wikipedia,’’ referring to the strait-laced collaborative online encyclopedia, “in that there is nothing factual.’’ “It’s very much about how one person felt when they wrote their definition,’’ Peckham said.

The northern suburb of Malden is dismissed with a single entry that defines it as a city “filled with little more than pizza places, hair and nail salons.’’

The community, however, is building another, perhaps less savory, reputation online among horror fans, after novelist Stephen King marched a gang of bloodthirsty zombies through town during an early scene in his 2006 best-selling novel “Cell.’’

Melrose, known as a bedroom community with rows of restored Victorians, has a message board where anonymous posters rip city officials and one another. Richie Ireton, a Revere native and newspaper publisher who operates five community websites in the area, including Melrose Messages, said the forum has been somewhat of a “shock’’ to a generally quiet community.

“People here were finding out there is lots going on behind closed doors,’’ he said.

In less than a year, the Melrose board has become his second-most popular chat board, after Whispering Winthrop, garnering an average of 3,000 to 4,000 page views daily and hundreds of postings.

At first, the most avid Melrose Messages followers seemed to be older residents arguing about politics and property taxes, but after a line of controversial discussion on teen drinking, the site began attracting younger readers, including some so aggrieved by the discussion among their elders that they unleashed a spam pornography attack on the message board.

The fascination over community image on the Internet has been blossoming for years, said Lisa Williams, founder of the popular community website H2otown, about goings-on in Watertown.

Her site, which launched in 2004, offered an “on ramp’’ into community life for newcomers to a town known for its established, old-timers’ culture, and a new place for the two groups to exchange ideas, she said.

Websites about communities are theatrical by nature, and filled with passionate residents, she said.

“All cities and towns are either a comedy or a tragedy. I felt that I was living in a sort of comic opera with real estate taxes.’’

Discussion on H2otown rarely devolved into insults about the community, and attacks on particular people weren’t permitted, Williams said.

“People tend to be nicer when they expect to see each other again,’’ said Williams.

Online expression of community brings together people who were previously “invisible to each other’’ or neighbors who simply didn’t have the opportunity to become close in real life.

“They also let you in on the local jokes and let you see that a place [where] you live is often very funny,’’ she said.

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.