03 September 2007
My Life As A Troll
I have a confession to make. At times in the past I've participated in the seamy side of blogging, being a troll. It's not a bright moment and I haven't participated in the practice in years. The reason I decided to write is because I inadvertently caused a site to have one of its best days of visits for sad reasons. The story should be out there for completeness.
My times as a troll were never good, because I can never get completely into character to pull off the ruse. Therefore, my few attempts at trolling were hit and run events. The infamous case that I'm writing about happened during the 2004 election season. It was early in the campaign, still 2003 and Howard Dean was leading the Democrat list. Saddam Hussein had just been captured. Some site, maybe the Corner, mentioned the Deaniacs' reactions. I decided to head over and have a little fun.
For some reason, I decided to pose as the wife of Don Geronimo, host of the radio show Don and Mike. Don's real name is Mike Sorce and his wife was Freda. Maybe I used the name in case other Don and Mike listeners read Dean's blog. Anyway, I left what I thought an over the top Deaniac would be thinking
Fast forward 18 months and I'd moved to Ohio, not within a market that carries Don and Mike. I still followed their newsgroup, alt.fan.don-n-mike. There I learned the sad news that Freda had died in a car accident. I used Google to find out more and this post was near the top. Even though I read Castle Argghhh!, I missed the posts when he talked about the crazies supporting Dean and used "Freda's" comment as evidence.
As people were searching the web for information about the accident they were discovering John's case against Dean. This lead to over 800 hits for the Castle. I wrote to John to explain that I was behind the Freda comment at Dean's website. He thanked me for the explanation and said he might write a post after time passed to close out the story. I don't think he did and now that I have a crapblog I thought I'd put the story out there.
So that is how I inadvertently caused a site to have a huge day of traffic. Not a proud moment. My condolences go out to Don (Mike)
My times as a troll were never good, because I can never get completely into character to pull off the ruse. Therefore, my few attempts at trolling were hit and run events. The infamous case that I'm writing about happened during the 2004 election season. It was early in the campaign, still 2003 and Howard Dean was leading the Democrat list. Saddam Hussein had just been captured. Some site, maybe the Corner, mentioned the Deaniacs' reactions. I decided to head over and have a little fun.
For some reason, I decided to pose as the wife of Don Geronimo, host of the radio show Don and Mike. Don's real name is Mike Sorce and his wife was Freda. Maybe I used the name in case other Don and Mike listeners read Dean's blog. Anyway, I left what I thought an over the top Deaniac would be thinking
Now more than ever we need Dean as President. He would pardon Saddam, the right thing to do.Fairly innocuous. No one responded to it and I didn't think anymore of it. As I said, my trolling was hit and miss and never protracted as I couldn't fully get into character. Soon after that it wasn't worth the effort and the phase passed.
Fast forward 18 months and I'd moved to Ohio, not within a market that carries Don and Mike. I still followed their newsgroup, alt.fan.don-n-mike. There I learned the sad news that Freda had died in a car accident. I used Google to find out more and this post was near the top. Even though I read Castle Argghhh!, I missed the posts when he talked about the crazies supporting Dean and used "Freda's" comment as evidence.
As people were searching the web for information about the accident they were discovering John's case against Dean. This lead to over 800 hits for the Castle. I wrote to John to explain that I was behind the Freda comment at Dean's website. He thanked me for the explanation and said he might write a post after time passed to close out the story. I don't think he did and now that I have a crapblog I thought I'd put the story out there.
So that is how I inadvertently caused a site to have a huge day of traffic. Not a proud moment. My condolences go out to Don (Mike)
Labels: don and mike, trolling
