Folks- I don’t mind if you play games in the comments section here, and quite honestly, I find DougJ’s antics amusing most of the time (except for when he intentionally queers a debate, as he has been known to do). But not everyone else does, and I am asking you to knock it off at places you go to that I have linked to.
It makes me look bad, other people are not as willing to play along as I am, and other websites don’t have a core of commenters who are “IN” on what is going on. In short, I really don’t care what you do here, but please stop doing it at places I link to, because it is making me look bad with people I respect.
Furthermore, folks like TBOGG, who really need all the help they can get to begin with and are never going to understand that DougJ (and NorthwestPHD and others) are a joke, think you are serious. This does nothing to advance any debate whatsoever.
So please knock it off.
Marcus Wellby
Sort of sounds like a mix of my 6th grade teacher (“remember, you represent the school on this field trip”) and an old neighbour (“If this ball lands in my yard again I am going to keep it!”).
Ah, thanks for the memories :)
Tim
That’s really interesting. But seems to only count donations from $2,000 and above.
kenB
John, purely out of curiosity, how does it make you look bad? Are these folks dropping your name after they’ve reeled in some suckers? Or is it just a known fact that your commenters are the source of all right-wing spoofing?
Tim
Whoops . . wrong thread . . .
les
You need to link to fewer wimps. Seriously, this is a pretty lame request, threat, whatever.
Davebo
You mean NortwestPHD isn’t really NorthwestPHD? Or isn’t 100% serious?
Marcus Wellby
From what I’ve been hearing, he is from the south east, and has a GED.
John Cole
It certainly isn’t a threat, just a request. Lame? maybe. Just asking you not to misbehave if I send you somewhere.
Heh.
ppGaz
It’s a reasonable request, I’m glad to comply.
Are we talking about direct a-b links (I jump there, from here) or any visits to those other sites?
Rob
How do they have any idea where we came from?
Brad R.
That’s a pretty hilarious comment by NorthWestPHD, though, you gotta admit. The Freepers actually started the theory that Wilson was the main target of Fitzgerald’s investigation.
John S.
John-
I find your request highly unusual and uncharacteristic of your general disregard for anything that even smacks of blogging ethics.
I am just baffled.
srv
John comes out against Operation Enduring Christmas. Always knew he was against Christmas.
Perry Como
Referers. Site tracking software will map if someone entered the site from another location. From there, the site owner can check the posters’ IP addresses with where they came from. Cutting and pasting the link into a new browser window will prevent referer tracking. I’m only providing this information for educational purposes. I would never support the idea of playing games in a comments section.
Mike S
I tend not to comment at blogs you link to unless it’s a compliment on the post. I’ve always felt you’ve been very gracious to those of us on the left but that’s not a general rule anywhere in the blogasphere. So I usually bite my tongue unless it’s a very egregious post on one of your links.
Davebo
Just curious though.
Does this mean Jeff can no longer post on his own blog?
;0)
John S.
Oh I get it now…
Tom Maguire has no sense of humor and wants to preserve the ‘reasonable’ and ‘important’ debate that goes in his comments.
CaseyL
*spits coffee onto keyboard*
TM: Master of Self-Flattery.
Krista
As my mom would say, he’s wearing his cranky pants today.
John Cole
Look- I like Tom Maguire, and one of the things you guys do frequently that does bother me is to attack other bloggers I like and respect.
If you don’t like Tom (and for the life of me, I do not know why- he may be a conservative, but he is fair and he is always willing to change his position when facts get in the way, not to mention he is decent to everyone regardless of a difference in opinions), fine. But do we really need to hear about it, and do we need to turn my website into a vehicle for attacks on him?
Faux News
“TM: Master of Self-Flattery”.
LOL. So true. To quote the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”:
“The Rabbi who praises himself has a congregation of one”.
Or better yet, perhaps the real problem for TM is that when a DougJ troll appears there are plenty of his regular readers who pile on in agreement with whatever outrageous right leaning statement was posted.
Krista
What I don’t understand, though John, is if Tom has a problem with certain people who he feels are trolling, even if some of those people also visit your site, what does that have to do with you? We’re all adults here, and you are no more responsible for our behaviour than we are for yours. If Tom has a problem with DougJ, or Northwest PhD, or anybody who posts here, then he should deal with that person directly. I initially found your site via Salon (The Daou Report, to be specific). If I chose to be a royal pain in the ass too you, I’m sure you’d be sensible enough to kick me in the butt, and not bring Salon into it.
DougJ
John, I knocked it off when you asked. I’ve been trolling on lots of sites for months but I don’t do it via connections from here.
I also have to ask this: why are Tom’s commenters still repeating lies I planted after they outted me?
If there’s some list of sites you don’t want me to troll, though, just give me a list.
John Cole
I get your poiint, Krista, but the DougJ ‘problem’ (I don’t think it is one here) is in large part a Balloon Juice creation. We were patient zero for this, and other people are not as patient. That is their right.
Really, though. Let’s not make a big deal of this. This was just a request. You can ignore it if you choose.
Krista
And if anybody’s trying to make you look bad, in my opinion, it’s Tom. I really don’t see why he felt the need to link to you on that tbogg site. He could have very easily made his point without dragging you into it.
John S.
I suppose I will have to refrain from pillorying the likes of Tom M. and Jeff G. lest my opinion of those who you have placed on pedestals turn your shrine to them into a launchpad for destroying their good names.
BTW – I went with the over-the-top rhetoric there to counterbalance your over-the-top rhetoric.
DougJ
Also, I agree that Tom’s site is good, but it is literally the only place I’ve had people get mad at me for doing my thing.
DougJ
John, seriously: I really like and respect you, so I will never troll a place through a link on here. And if there’s places you don’t want trolled, period, by me from usual IPs, just give them to me.
Uncle Meat
“I get your poiint, Krista, but the DougJ ‘problem’ (I don’t think it is one here) is in large part a Balloon Juice creation”.
Yes, but BJ hardly has the monopoly on Troll attacks. F*ckedcompany Trolls have been doing that for at least 5 years. Sorry, but BJ is not the index case (patient zero) for “when Trolls attack”.
Krista
Ditto. Scout’s honor. Wait, I wasn’t a scout. And I can’t swear on the Bible, ’cause I’m Agnostic. All right, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. If I lie, may I fry.
DougJ
Sorry to go on and on, but I have a guilty Irish-Catholic conscience: I only went so nuts on Maguire from here because I thought the whole episode really proved my point that it’s hard to tell a right-wing spoof from a real right-winger. But I’m sorry if I rubbed his nose in it too much, that was probably uncalled for. It is a good blog — his analysis of Plame is the best of any conservative site.
Marcus Wellby
It really is, though I’ve noticed the same with some uber-Liberal posters. I have read some complete lunacy at Kos. I also got flamed to a cinder over at Atrios for making a joke about hippies buying bulk granolla at co-op markets.
John Cole
DougJ- Please. Stop. It is no big deal.
circlethewagons
I go away for a couple days and I miss out on something.
Typical.
Must “rewind” and see what I missed.
Duncan
Is this the same DougJ that used to be referred to as “Tiny Meat” by atrios over on his Eschaton site? I understand that he picked up the term from his first college girlfriend who contended that his, er, manhood was insufficient to satisfy a chihuahua.
ppGaz
Did I miss something?
Steve S
Honestly, I don’t think DougJ is making fun of Maguire. He’s making fun of the commentors on Maguire’s site.
Steve S
Agreed. One of the problems with dKos is it has become a echo chamber, much akin to most righty blogs. It’s really bad in some parts of the town. (dKos is like a small city… there’s the french quarter, and china town, and the main street section, etc.)… the groupthink is mostly out in the subsections. The mainstream still questions stuff and is good.
Although it still allows for more divergent intelligent discussion than say redstate.org, where if you question someone’s preconception you get banned immediately.
Honestly, that is one thing I like about this blog, the divergent irreverance.
Lines
Why does Tom Maguire feel that he was targetted? It appears that only his commenters were really the ones engaged in the whole thing, and from Tom’s posts, he figured it out really fast and like a speeding bullet, he banned the spoofer.
Is one’s blog automatically an extension of one’s self?
Perry Como
Apparently a sense of humor. Comments like that are high comedy. I can barely stop laughing. Really.
Another Jeff
Prove it.
I don’t go to Redstate because, despite some Republican leanings on my part, I think their love affair with a far-right flake like Tom Coburn makes them way too far to the right for me, but again, prove you get immediately banned if you say something they don’t agree with.
This bullshit about “oh, Kos and Atrios might be partisan, but they’re much more tolerant of differing views” has to be the biggest bunch of crap i’ve ever heard.
John Redworth
So I guess a list of blonde jokes is out of the question?
SeesThroughIt
Do you mean they got mad at you for the comments you made in parody mode or that they got mad at you once they found out you were a parody?
Also, Marcus Wellby, any time and place is the right time and place for hippie jokes. The day sensible people of all stripes can’t make fun of hippies is a sad day indeed.
ppGaz
Jesus, what a dingbat you are. I KNEW THAT FOR CRISSAKES.
Which is why YOU apparently need a sense of humor.
Perry Como
Just use Democrat jokes.
Q. How many Democrats does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. None. They are too busy cutting and running in Iraq!
That’s wingnut to you, mister.
Krista
I swear, it’s a good thing that we all interact online and not in person. I’m just waiting for one of us to hit another in the face with a cream pie any minute now.
Krista
What a ragtag, motley bunch we all are. John, you must be proud to have such a group of ruffians with such loyalty to you.
DougJ
I mean once they found me out. People usually like the whole thing when they find out I’m kidding. Take Stormy and Mac, for example. The right wing isn’t more humorless in general. It’s just the TM commenters who are. (Not all of them but as a group)
kl
Haven’t you grown accustomed to it by now?
ppGaz
You’re down to one straight line a month.
Have you considered a different hobby?
kl
Get to work!
ppGaz
!
Yes massa.
Al Maviva
John, you just don’t get it pal. Anybody to the right of “X”, where “X” is the political coordinant of individual leaving a comment here, is a bloody minded Bush fellater who’d sell his own blessed mother’s ashes in order to further the vast right wing Chimpy McHalliburton OilllL! conspiracy. And anybody to the left of “X” is a loon, or more likely a deranged Freeper troll who is simply out to discredit Democrats, simply a slightly more clever and sneaky version of the afforementioned Bush fellater.
See, it makes perfect sense – kind of like the complete absence of any evidence of a conspiracy is actually proof of the suspected conspiracy, since by nature conspiracies hide themselves well, etc…
And as for you Krista, John, you must be proud to have such a group of ruffians with such loyalty to you… – I have no loyalty to John. I simply come here because I’m off my meds, and trying to get a coherent arguement out of people around here is the cheapest way I could indulge my severe masochistic streak.
DougJ
What’s your story Al?
aop
I don’t know if you get banned immediately, but I can’t count how many times I’ve scanned comment threads at Red State and found Streiff or that other guy (Leon?) banning someone–and usually with a really irritating, self-regarding tough-guy tone. I mean, it’s their right to create a vacuum-sealed GOP echo chamber if they want, but I find the policing factor there to be kind of gross and stupid. Kos is irritating too, but in less of a top-down way.
Perry Como
Now that’s funny.
stickler
Another Jeff asks:
Well, I would, but the neat thing about Redstate is that your threads disappear once you’ve been banned. You become an Unperson. So I would show you my posts from July 2005 but they’re not there anymore.
Redstate: Mindless jingoes, fascist bootlickers and Puritan scolds. That’s all you need to know.
Al Maviva
>>>What’s your story Al?
Yep, that’s right. And I’m sticking to it.
DougJisAll
Thanks DoungJ. Now that you’ve just had this long conversation with yourself, I have a better handle on a lot more of your IDs. You might need to make new ones now- but I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you.
MM
[ObDougJ] What about all the blogs that DougJ doesn’t troll? Why don’t we ever hear about them?[/ObDougJ]
Seriously though, just cause John will let us pull out some cardboard and breakdance in the kitchen doesn’t mean that everyone is down with the breakdancing.
Steve S
This got me banned…
http://www.redstate.org/comments/2005/7/12/17437/2863/3#3
In response to this: The minute something big like this happens, the Liberals/Democrats automaticaly use it as an opportunity to attack Bush and Blair, as do their allies, the news channels (CNN, CNBC, ABC, etc.). This proves that they don’t care about those innocent people in London, who had no idea that in a few seconds they would be dead. They just think, “Oh, cool, terrorist just killed a bunch of people. We can use this against Bush.” That just makes me sick.
I asked…
Where you equally sick when conservatives used 9/11 to attack liberals?
To which I received two responses… One from a commentator:
Very good point…. Karl Roves comments about liberals being soft on terror was even more exploitation of 9-11.
And the other from a site moderator:
We don’t need and won’t accept this type of commentary here. Next time you are gone.
Shoot off your mouth on this warning and consider it to be “next time.”
Steve S
aop writes:
Yep, it was strief who banned me. That’s ok, the site is a sewer anyway and hardly worth reading.
dKos is a tough place. It’s actually a good experience. I started of there frequently getting into arguments and being troll rated. You learn that to respond you can’t accuse… you have to question and then offer alternative point of view. It works, and it creates excellent debate. The bulk of the readers there are very centrist, but you have to sift through a handful of very vocal fruitcakes to realize that. I do think dKos is a mighty tool, and a problem for the GOP as long as they keep things shaken up and don’t let it get too far off into freeper conspiracy world, it draws people to the party and makes the bond stronger.
redstate, is all about blaming everything on the liberals, which is why the quality of news and debate there is so poor. However effective that is as a campaign tactic, as a long term strategy it’s a loser.
kl
Well put.
John Redworth
ooh, let me try…
Q. How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. None since the lightbulb should be able to change itself rather than rely on federal handouts plus the lightbulb just got $40M in tax rebates from the energy bill
DougJ
Q. How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb?
None. Nothing is wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Reports that it is dimming are fictions created by the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?
Krista
DougJ – LOL. That’s Stewart-worthy.
Shygetz
Q. How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. The existence of a lightbulb is merely a theory and not a proven fact. We believe that, rather than a lightbulb, there is an unknown creature with all God-like qualities (but not necessarily God per se) at the center of the light. The recent vanishing of the light is due to the fact that gays are getting married. We are seeking to teach “Intelligent Lighting” taught in high schools.
Faux News
Perfect description of that place. I do go there occasionally when I’m in need of a good laugh or a 1984 “doublethink” moment. I was on there daily for the Harriet Miers nomination. People on RS were literally have strokes over this. One would think she was the anti-Christ by their comments.
ppGaz
Oranized and targeted trolling is the future of the blogosphere. Think of the problem set as being similar to the Microsoft vs. Hackers problem set. The bigger the target, the more attractive it is. The more resistance the target puts up, the more determined the elecctronic insurgency is to overcome the resistance.
This insurgency is in its first throes, folks. It ain’t goin’ away.
pmm
Face it, DougJ has outgrown Balloon-Juice, and needs his own blog. While his posts don’t do it for me, it’s undeniable that they’re pretty popular here and would go over well, traffic-wise, on a stand alone site.
Then he can get into flame wars with this guy, which could develop into some sort of meta-hoax that Andy Kaufman would pull, were he still around.
Mac Buckets
The correct answer is:
Q. How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. No need to change it. “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Lighty.”
ppGaz
A: Republicans will pass a Gaslight Protection Act to preserve traditional lighting values.
Please contact Kay Bailey “Stormy” Hutchinson and Bill “Buckets” Frist for more information.
ppGaz
PS– Later it will be revealed that the measure was supported by campaign contributions from the Liquified Petroleum Gas industry, through Tom Delay and Lynne Cheney.
kl
Jimmy?
ppGaz
Martha.
Krista
Oh for chrissake…
Krista
Interesting…Tom got mildly spanked. It looks like the traffic at tbogg might benefit from this little contretemps:
John Redworth
I applaud all of you since your jokes were much better than my failed attempt… bravo!!
Krista
John Redworth – failed? What are you talking about? I liked it.
DougJ
I wonder if that is a good strategy to get more traffic for bloggers: get involved in some bizarre dispute with another more well-trafficked blog. It does seem to have worked for Tbogg.
If I someday create a fake right-wing blog and people come over to troll it, I will respond exactly the way Maguire did. He’s been almost Colbert-like with his stupefying pomposity about this whole “controversey”. His part couldn’t have been scripted better. I’m not attacking he here: I truly am stunned by how poorly he handled this. You’d think he was running a cancer research institute the way he acts.
ppGaz
We have invented the Sloan-Kettering blog model?