This is probably an urban myth, but a friend who has heard me rave about SDMB asked me if we had any George W. Bush sock puppets on this board.
This guy is an aide for a (Democratic) congressman and he said the Bush forces have people hitting the major chat rooms echoing Bush statements and promoting them.
I told him that I didn’t think so because most of the Bush advocates have been here for quite a while and unless Bush has been doing it since he ran for President the first time, we don’t really qualify.
I suppose it would be a good way for the board to make money with memberships and all - heck if they paid people to do it, it would be a great way for us to make some extra money. No, I am not volunteering to create a sock puppet, just to take money to spout pro-Bush propaganda. Heck I’m as good as any Iraqi newspaper after all.
Any political mole worth their salt would report back to the mother ship that this board would be a piss-poor place to hide out and spout some talking-points polemic. The regulars would spot it right off and have multi and simulposting hissy fits. We’ve seen ‘guests’ who are long-winded and seemingly very well-informed about certain topics who come out of nowhere and return there just as quickly; we were not fooled. Right off the top of my head I can think of the ‘smoking bans are silly’ and ‘flouride is a conspiracy’ people.
Of course, they weren’t socks; I imagine it would take too much effort and reap too little benefit for an actual sock to be created and maintained. Maybe the tinfoil-hatted will chime in to disagree?
Well, there have been some cases of movies trying this sort of tactic on various movie related boards. “Oh my God, I just saw a sneak and this is the best movie ever!”
Hmmm. I think “sock puppet” is the wrong term to use here, because we aren’t talking about a single user (George W. or otherwise) posting, getting banned, and returning under different user names.
And frankly, if a Bush staffer wants to join our board and not tell everyone what he does in real life and try to push the Bush agenda, I welcome it. Just try to keep up, will ya?
I recall one time a couple of years back when I strongly suspected some administration operative paid us a visit. It was in the lengthy thread engendered by Cecil’s “damn fool war” remark at the end of his “Was Bush AWOL” column. On the Friday the column was posted some newby vigorously argued Bush’s side - until 5 pm eastern time when he/she/or/it disappeared, never to be heard from again. (I tried to voice my suspicion in that thread but the hamsters, spotting me for a newby, gleefully chewed up the post and flushed it down the I/O port.)
As a matter of general principle I have no doubt this happens, and not just in politics. Marketing Is All.
It’s not just the movie boards. My non-entertainment message board gets hit with quite a few viral marketing pitches for bands, movies TV shows. The mods are pretty savvy at catching them, and they’re usually deleted a few minutes after they’re posted. Here’s an example of one such post.
It was the first post by the user.
If the White House was doing something similar, would it be illegal if it was being paid for by the government rather than the Republican Party?
You mean this poster actually posted under the user name Viral Marketer? Talk about truth in advertising. You’ve got to respect that in a weird sort of way.
Yes, it would be illegal. However, it wouldn’t be the first time. A handful of columnists were found to have taken money from the government to promote its policies. The most prominent of them took hundreds of thousands of dollars to pump up the No Child Left Behind program in his columns. (Armstrong Williams, IIRC)
Even more dramatic is the millions the CIA paid to the Rendon Group to ballyhoo a campaign of misinformation “perception management” to make everybody think the Iraq invasion was a good idea.
Compared to that, would it be surprising for somebody to be paid to hang around the SDMB to ask us why we hate America, playing junior Bill O’Reilly?
The astroturfing in your link was paid for by Microsoft. Let’s keep in mind that all the newswarping in this case is paid for by taxes, not by the Republican Party.
I would never have thought us significant, or for that matter malleable, enough to bother attempting to manipulate. I suppose the philosophy is, “every little bit helps,” and “enough little bits help a lot.”
Sorry, this post comes out sort of insulting to us. I don’t mean it to. I’m just surprised. That’s all.
I actually work in Marketing, and get the stupid marketing magazines. They recommend against trying to use this kind of viral marketing. It’s unethical, for one, and as you can see from the examples, it’s really not at all effective. Embarassing as it may be to get twitted infront of 50,000 of the smartest people on earth (and a few total dipsticks), it’s nothing compared to trying it on someone who can publish the twitting.
I wonder, though, if it would be illegal for someone in the White House communications office to do. They do have a pretty broad leeway in terms of what they use the government’s money for. I mean I’ve never seen a press conference or televised speech that was anything but propaganda, and it’s okay to pay people to produce and execute these things with government funds.
I’m sure it’s happened occasionally. From all sides of the political fence, too.
Interesting thread indeed. But reading it made me thirsty. That’s why I went straight to the fridge and popped a cool can of John Smith’s Ale. It’s got a ‘widget’ in the can, that gives it a really creamy head, just like it’s been poured in your local pub!
