# George W. sock puppets?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-w-sock-puppets/334583>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [December 7, 2005, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-w-sock-puppets/334583 "2005-12-07T23:51:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-w-sock-puppets/334583/21 "2005-12-12T14:55:06Z")

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> [@jjimm](#):
>
> 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!

Post 11,794 - not viral marketing.  
Post 1 - definitely viral marketing.

If a first post from a user looks fanboyish, I’ll take a much closer look.

Another form of hidden spam hitting message boards is SEO link spamming. Someone creates a profile, puts a link or two to some site in their profile or signature file, and never returns. Search engine crawls your message board, finds the links, and increases the page ranking or relevance for those linked sites. In response to a few cases of SEO link spamming incidents, new users cannot have signatures (or a bunch of other amenities like avatars and custom titles) until they have 25 posts.

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-w-sock-puppets/334583/22 "2005-12-12T15:06:56Z")

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> [@elmwood](#):
>
> Post 11,794 - not viral marketing.  
> Post 1 - definitely viral marketing.

It’s a long-term marketing strategy.

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**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-w-sock-puppets/334583/23 "2005-12-12T16:34:47Z")

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For some reason I’m craving a John Smith’s right now…

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**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-w-sock-puppets/334583/24 "2005-12-13T00:19:19Z")

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I was just going to mention how dissatisfied I _used_ to be with my injection-molded plastic optics. The one day I took a chance and called  
\<snip\>

and freindly and knowledgeable. It wasn’t long before we were  
\<snip\>

a run that size in four weeks, unless there’s tooling." I said “Oh, there _will be_ tooling.”  
\<snip\>

to me on the street and ask, “Say, fella, where’d you get that positive fresnel? It’s awful nice.”  
\<snip\>

Mister, I’m all smiles.

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