A PSA About Troll Accounts.

Chdamn

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Some of you may already know this but for those who do not.

Conservative and Liberal Political Action Committees routinely employee people to troll sites that have opposing view points. I spent a good deal of time talking about this with someone who ran such a group when I was involved in a PAC. He was from an affiliate group that was much more republican centered and well funded.

There is a formula for how these accounts interact on a site. Well there are several formulas I guess you would say. There are actual people running the accounts, sometimes multiple accounts and each one may be following a different track.

Sometimes they come in as a new member and immediately get involved in political discussions. These accounts will be over the top in there absurd posting and antagonistic to the extreme.

Others will join and post mundane things for up to a year so that they appear to be long standing members with a decent post count before posting rhetoric.

Others will post constantly and consistently, views that mirror the groups postings and then start posting things that seem reasonably contradictory as they bide their time waiting for an opportunity to catch someone saying something that can be used against them on the political stage. These accounts are usually reserved for national party type discussion platforms.

There are other tracks that they take but usually deviations of those three. On a site this size I would hazard a guess that there are at least two to three people running different versions of these accounts on our site. So figure 7-10 accounts either active or dormant.

That isn’t to say that all troll accounts are members of a PAC being paid to stir the pot. There are people out there who just enjoy being antagonistic to strangers on the internet, and of course there are some people who own guns and think communism would work if we just did it the right way.

So always keep that in the back of your mind when getting involved arguing with an obvious troll. A good rule of thumb is when you ask yourself “How could anyone be this stupid” they’re probably being paid to be that stupid.

Just sayin.
 
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Others will join and post mundane things for up to a year so that they appear to be long standing members with a decent post count before posting rhetoric.



So figure 7-10 accounts either active or dormant.

They’re like 17 year cicadas.

only louder
 
Shouldn’t you be finding some more downed trees you can misidentify as walnut so I can borrow your chainsaw to cut up?

Do you really think you should be handling chainsaws there hop-a-long?
 
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Busted, my tactics exposed, as I slowly bide my time and post mundane posts and like pictures of dogs, skinny chicks, fat chicks, chicks in stockings, hell any chick, awaiting my chance to pounce. Actually from some of the political stuff I see on here, a troll would not last ten minutes. I get scared just reading it sometimes. Some highly opinionated honchos on here;)
 
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and here ive thought the members who just seem to wanna poo poo on every post were just crappy people - you mean they are getting paid to argue with everybody?
 
and here ive thought the members who just seem to wanna poo poo on every post were just crappy people - you mean they are getting paid to argue with everybody?

Some are and some aren’t. Just something to keep in mind. It is a real tactic that is employed by both sides.
 
What’s surprising is how phuddish some old gun guys can be, and I mean pistols not shotguns, on some other sites. Somebody started a very similar thread on a 1911 forum last week, and about a week later one of the great old pistol smiths started yelling about not posting politics on that “great forum” (which is also now owned by a media company like some others we know.)

If you can’t talk politics on a gun forum about a party who would take away the second amendment, which of course protects the first, where the heck else do you discuss it.
 
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