We have a russian troll, name of Barack

The BBQ Pit
1

Yes, our poster named after our recent president is a Russian Troll, imho.

Look at his thread:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=877270

In this thread (and others0) he purports to be supporting Bernie Sanders, while actually driving people away from Sanders, in fact, generating much hate and dislike for Bernie. While doing so, he also attacks Biden and a few other democrats. But not Trump.

Lines like "You will vote for Bernie Sanders and you will like it.

and then in reply to Jophiel who said:
“Man, I hope you didn’t think that was going to make anyone more inclined to vote for Sanders.”

His reply "No not at all my intention. "

and this reply:Barack Obama
"Haha you got me, I guessed I expected more substance than speculation from dopers. Might just be the group I reeled in with my post." is a clear admission of trolling.

and his history: “Why did we free the slaves?”= trolling.
How Did The NSA Plant Malware In Dams, Hospitals, and Power Grids?

During the 2016 elections:Why isn’t Hillary clinton in jail?

And this attack on the real President Obama:" *Obama vetos 9/11 bill for relations, yet carpet bombs the middle east out of revenge?
Support our allies, maintain sovereignty, be damn with your excuses. He’s a populist, corporatist, blue dog piece of walking excrement. *

And so forth.

Ladies and Gentledopers: we should be proud in a way. The Kremlin actually thought enough of the SDMB to plant a Troll among us.

2

I’d be more inclined to think he were a Russian troll if he switched his name to Hillary Clinton. :smiley:

3

Snerk. :p:D

4

Definitely a troll. I hadn’t considered the Russian angle until you included the thread about infrastructure. Interesting.

5

I’m thinking stoner, not Russian.

6

So he didn’t say “Glass Seagull” ironically? Hmm.

7

I think he’s just not very bright. Take a look at the string of poorly-thought-out OPs he’s dumped in GD over the past year or two.

8

Glass Seagull is the name of my band formed to teach kids about economics.

9

Russian Troll (Netflix Original Series)

Tragicomedy about a faceless 400-pound Slav sitting on a bed in Pavlovsk who finds himself caught in a mysterious time loop, causing the members of an online discussion forum to repeatedly encounter the same sock each time he is banned and immediately reborn.

10

I bet they ran so far away from that concert.

11

Snerk.:p:D

12

When they heard the band name they were like “what the flock?”

13

No, that’s the other Seagull band.

14

Uncle Vanya, in the cherry orchard, with a samovar!

15

I dunno if he’s Russian - in fact, that may be giving him too much credit. But definitely trolling. The name was the first clue, really.

16

Wow, exactly one out of four posts is a new thread. Talk about hit and run.

17

For God’s sake, the Russians do not give one single solitary shit about the SDMB.

18

Neither do the proselytizers, but they wander through here now and again after being directed to here from another site.

Professional trolls are just trained to stick around in places they find an audience, rather than just dropping their loads of inspiration and moving on immediately.

19

An audience is important to the art of learning how to troll. And even Russians have to learn—they’re not born knowing how!

It’s certainly true that ‘influencing SDMB users’ is not a goal of IRA operations, but ‘influencing American and world opinion’ definitely is. And you don’t learn how to influence opinion via sites on which you have few or no interactions of any length (such as Twitter or Facebook). You come to a place where you can get into some in-depth back-and-forth, over a period of days or longer. A medium-sized message board is ideal for that purpose.

(Personally there are one or two accounts I’d think more likely than that of “Barack” to be written by people whose paychecks come ultimately from the Kremlin. But, who knows?)

20

The style of posting on the SDMB is so different from the style on social media, it would be useless to use it as a trading ground. It would be like taking swimming lessons to train for mountain climbing.