Could be that and a whole lot more: voting for oneself in competitions, lending weight and applying a 'peer' bias to a not necessarily controversial opinion, wooing somebody by validating yourself with a kind of backup, performing your own show and making best use of your multiple personality disorder, and who knows...maybe just getting off on knowing you're hoodwinking people. We've, I mean I've, inhabited a space in the past where all this went on—made me quite paranoid it did.
The term itself, sock-puppet, like most internet terms, has experienced strong semantic shift since its coinage. From Wikipedia... A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term, a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who spoke to, or about, themselves while pretending to be another person.[1] The term now includes other misleading uses of online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a person or organization,[2] to manipulate public opinion,[3] or to circumvent a suspension or ban from a website. A significant difference between the use of a pseudonym[4] and the creation of a sockpuppet is that the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer. Many online communities attempt to block sockpuppets.[citation needed] Semantic shift aside, the broader use of the term still always entails the idea of nefarious subterfuge.
Thanks. RE: #2, yes, as long as nobody confuses influence with manipulation. Ben Franklin, for instance, had a small army of alter egos whose names he'd publish under, and he certainly was out to influence public opinion. But I hope no one would charge Silence Dogood and Poor Richard of being sock puppets. But then, I doubt he ever had more than one of them expounding on a given subject at a time. Or did he?
On the other hand, I still have trouble reading Dilbert since it was revealed that Scott Adams was using sock puppets to tell people what a genius he was.
you'd hope a genius wouldn't be so easily caught (unless it was a double bluff based on 'no such thing as bad publicity)
No, we are among you. Some have tried to create troll forums on DW, but they get DDoS & trolled out of existence in a few hours. I am someone that has a lot of history being involved in this sort of thing. Always remember, there are people working on both sides of everything, if given time. There is so much of it going on, most have no idea and will never have an idea. There are companies and gov organizations that create multi accounts and study psychological effects on other users. The good ones know technology, people, and awareness of time. There are forums that rake in big bucks and are mostly driven by alt/sock puppet accounts. The business behind it is to create enough drama that people keep returning to 'just say one thing', but then you ban them for no reason and tell them they need to pay or work to get back in good graces. The majority of people will pay/work to get back in.....why? Because you created a short-life addiction. It is easy to manipulate people online. There are forums where you can 'prove' yourself and get hired to troll/sock puppet. This is big business in some places. This type of thing is actually put in business plans, and a percent of investors see no issue with it. Everyone needs to look at it this way: It is business and money. When trolls descend on ABC, NBC, BBC, CBS, CNN, etc sites and shut down the discussions; who now gets the discussion? Eyes = money for most sites. When trolls descend on a forum; where do the members then go? There is usually a corresponding site rising through the search rankings. In business, this is no different than in the 1980s when televangelists realized it cost them $! to answer a 1-800 call; so a few set up auto dialers and put a bunch of others out of business. I will occasionally don my Robin Hood hat and hit a forum when I see really bad stuff going on. For me it is just really fun to shut down trolls that think they are trolls.
I was thinking more of Taken - "I have a lot of history in this kind of thing, and its given me skills, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you"
In the old text-based multiplayer games (MUDs, MUSHes, etc.) it was totally normal to have several identities, to the extent that there was a term, "Mav" (a verb, as in, "Dangit, I maved again.") for saying something from one account when you meant to say it from another account. But since these environments were created for roleplaying, it was of course totally normal to have more than one character. (I put this all in the past tense, but, as far as I know, some such games still exist, but not enough for there to be any chance of my ever again finding an active one that I like. I miss them.)
Funny you mention it, but... Some time earlier this year I was contacted by a group of game-players that seemed to have lost the venue whence they came. It shut down or some deal like that. They asked me about making use of our RPG area and how to go about having multiple accounts for exactly (it seems) this kind of thing. I told them that the best way to go about it was to look elsewhere because I wasn't about to keep tabs on that.
But it's not directly interactive, right? As in, I pose, and somebody else poses within seconds, and everybody watches the scene in realtime? Or am I misunderstanding how it works?
@Kingtype would be the one to ask. I myself don't RPG, and that area of the forum has traditionally been like a little city state within a larger country, sovereign and seperate with its own governance.
I'm assuming that it's in a forum format, rather than a chat room format. But that's just because I've never seen a chat room here; I could be wrong.
Yes, he did. It was one of the reasons upper class in Europe hated him, and others loved and paid him. He was a dandy among the non-informed.
