I appreciate your skepticism, but I doubt I can find enough evidence to convince you that NRs do this intentionally. Most of the trouble comes from not being able to find tweets from months ago unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, provided they still even exist (e.g., Konk). I’m looking into the PUAs for examples, but I don’t know their community as well.
If it’s the word you object to, perhaps “meatpuppetry” is better? I don’t really see much of a difference, as they both involve manufacturing the appearance of support through multiple accounts.
So, uh, sorry. I really thought this would be easier to show than it turned out to be.
So if I’m following this correctly, you think that the neoreactionary activity on SSC is thanks to an organized effort to create the appearance of support, but not by deceptive means? That is, Scott posts something relevant to their interests, the first neoreactionary to find it tweets “hey, come back me up”, and suddenly half the NRx sphere is posting in the comments under their standard noms de blog?
I’m still not convinced, but I’d find that more plausible than astroturfing by my understanding of the word. Not sure what I’d call it, though; “brigading” is close, but not quite it. And I’m not even sure where I’d draw the line; the distinction between “check out this cool thing” and “help me burn this witch” is awfully fine, especially when the cool thing is (e.g.) an anti-FAQ.
I appreciate your skepticism, but I doubt I can find enough evidence to convince you that NRs do this intentionally. Most of the trouble comes from not being able to find tweets from months ago unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, provided they still even exist (e.g., Konk). I’m looking into the PUAs for examples, but I don’t know their community as well.
If it’s the word you object to, perhaps “meatpuppetry” is better? I don’t really see much of a difference, as they both involve manufacturing the appearance of support through multiple accounts.
So, uh, sorry. I really thought this would be easier to show than it turned out to be.
So if I’m following this correctly, you think that the neoreactionary activity on SSC is thanks to an organized effort to create the appearance of support, but not by deceptive means? That is, Scott posts something relevant to their interests, the first neoreactionary to find it tweets “hey, come back me up”, and suddenly half the NRx sphere is posting in the comments under their standard noms de blog?
I’m still not convinced, but I’d find that more plausible than astroturfing by my understanding of the word. Not sure what I’d call it, though; “brigading” is close, but not quite it. And I’m not even sure where I’d draw the line; the distinction between “check out this cool thing” and “help me burn this witch” is awfully fine, especially when the cool thing is (e.g.) an anti-FAQ.
“Dogpiling” is the word I’ve seen.
Swarming?
As an aside, I have doubts that the neoreactionaries are *that* interested in gaming Yvain’s blog...
They’re massively interested in controlling their presence on the Internet.