I’d still tend to think most of the trolls we see are unpaid – never underestimate the capacity for weirdness, obnoxiousness, and stupidity of unpaid people with too much time on their hands.RINO in Name Only on February 18, 2013 at 12:06 AM

Yes, we’ve seen some here and I’ve seen many on other sites:-)

I doubt bluegill is paid, or at least not right now. Pathological Palin-derangement is a much more plausible phenomenon.

I’m not sure what the term is, but unbalanced is one. Hating Palin when most supported her and loving Romney when most opposed him.
By my definition of a troll, whether paid or unpaid is lying/distorting/smearing is what bluegill has done. A lot of concerned troll with this one as well. Bi-trolling? LOL

Thanks for your reply.

Since you are skeptical, doing a Search on Paid Trolls may change your mind.

Interesting. I just did that, and at first I was still unconvinced – a lot of the places discussing the “paid troll” theory were conspiracy theory websites.

But then I saw one where someone mentioned some marketing corporation, and then it occurred to me that plenty of companies and organizations, including political ones, use spam-bots, as well as telemarketers, and anyone who’s willing to put money into that probably wouldn’t shy away from paid trolls, if it could be done profitably. Of course, I’m sure they don’t think of it as trolling, and I bet the trolls don’t either – you’d be amazed at what people can rationalize to avoid cognitive dissonance.

I’d still tend to think most of the trolls we see are unpaid – never underestimate the capacity for weirdness, obnoxiousness, and stupidity of unpaid people with too much time on their hands.

But looking back, there are at least a few very likely were paid according to some system, either by the post, or by the reply.

Lib4life was probably a textbook example of this – she basically only posted talking points, and didn’t engage with other commenters more or less ever. It’s really that kind of commenter that I think you can make the best argument for them being a troll; the people who engage in back-and-forth, or who post slightly more complex thoughts (even very stupid ones), are probably less likely.

I doubt bluegill is paid, or at least not right now. Pathological Palin-derangement is a much more plausible phenomenon. But she could have been paid at some earlier time. I suppose it is also often going to be the case that a paid troll is someone who already is a supporter who is inclined to post, but they decide “why not get paid for my time, since I’m going to do it anyway?”. Then, once you start getting paid by the post or reply or whatever, you gradually find yourself moving away from the goal of genuinely winning an argument and towards that of meeting your quota or whatever.

But yeah, anyway, I think you may have convinced me on this one.

RINO in Name Only on February 17, 2013 at 1:14 PM

Well, the paid trolls mostly come out during a Presidential Primary and the pending Election itself. They don’t skip the mid-terms or any Senate or House Race tho. Since you are skeptical, doing a Search on Paid Trolls may change your mind. They are on Select websites and don’t try to cover the entire Web, which would be impossible to do anyway:-) And if their lies/distortions/smears didn’t work or benefit a cause or a Candidate, they wouldn’t do it. They get paid by each response they get. HA .didn’t/doesn’t have as many due to the Open Registration Policy. Other websites where you can Register at will is different.

The Paid trolls for political purposes surfaced in 2007 from my experience being online at many Conservative and Democratic websites. Those that were moderated were able to control them better, but those that didn’t suffered. They became a platform of troll discussions and not the topic of the threads at all. Less talk about real issues and more talk about the trolls; mission accomplished. Intelligent commenters were disgusted and left, so truth was sacrificed. Guess who benefits? The Candidate that couldn’t get his message out and in most cases, it was the Conservative/Republican and now Tea Party Candidates.

The unpaid trolls and concerned trolls have the same objective. I’m not lumping into those categories those that simply have strong differences of opinion. However, if lies/distortions/smears are part of their “opinions” then it would apply.

We can agree to disagree however:-) This has been my experience.

I’ve recently left quite a few posts here in H.A. hoping to get more people involved in the fight. Did you miss all of those?

DannoJyd on February 17, 2013 at 2:53 PM

…sporadic doesn’t count! (:-<)
…didn't realize you were from my state…we need all the help we can get!…Levin…Stabenaw…Conyers…Dingel…

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/04/24/321/comment-page-2/#comment-6732546

I saw that. Someone clicked a link. It woke me up from my slumber. ; )

Bmore on February 17, 2013 at 10:29 AM

When I saw this earlier I was very impressed. I thought to myself “wow, this Bmore fellow really sees all.”

Alas, my faith is broken.

PLEASE DO educate us all on what a MOBY is.

Um, I thought it was a relatively commonly used term referring to leftist concern trolls pretending to be conservative – the terminology “Moby” referring to an attempt by the musician “Moby” to incite said trolling.

Is that someone who doesn’t bs us about how things like Romneycare [where is the freedom in ANY Mandate?]are conservative accomplishment?

Actually, Mobys, assuming they even exist (I’m not convinced they do in any significant numbers), almost certainly will BS you about all sorts of things – it’s kind of built into the definition.

Is that one of the people that lets the GOP Elitists pick my candidate for me? I think everyone knows today how DISASTEROUSLY that always seems to work out.

Why on earth would you do such a thing? I hope you’ve never done this before. Your primary ballot is there for a reason, you know.

Why not just do what I and most conservatives do: announce to the world at large that you will happily give consideration to any candidate who chooses to run in the republican primary, regardless of whether the establishment backs them or not, and then pick the best candidate from that group? Granted, sometimes I get some lousy choices because candidates who might have been more appealing either don’t run, or worse, decide to give me and the rest of the GOP primary voters the finger by going third party, when they know (or should know) that the whole point of a primary is to have a way to democratically choose a single candidate to coalesce around, for the purpose of avoiding the spoiler effect. But sometimes, life just doesn’t give you a lot of good options, and you have to make the best out of a bad situation.

Maybe a MOBY is one of the people that REFUSES to stand by and allow the corrupt-o-crats make up our minds for us.

No, I’m pretty sure that’s not what “Moby” means.

Please, let’s do be relevant for a change.

To be honest, given that I never mentioned you, or the establishment, and never implied you or anyone else was a Moby, and given that my entire argument was based on my assertion that if said people existed at all, they were likely rare, or at least not paid astroturfers, and the only sentence in which I even used the word “Moby” was one where I expressed doubt that any of the commenters from 7 years ago were Mobys, I’d say its not me who has relevance issues.

arnold ziffel on February 17, 2013 at 2:04 PM

lolz..Just trying t do my best..:)

…bout time you got fired up!

KOOLAID2 on February 17, 2013 at 2:30 PM

So solly, but I’ve BEEN FIRED UP! Over the past 2 weeks I managed to get elected by my fellow delegates to go to the MIGOP Convention and I’ve been working to dig up dirt on the corrupt-o-crats running for re-election to leadership posts in the MIGOP, so now my gun is loaded and I’m ready for the hunt.

Mine is a relentless effort to take back the fine state of Michigan from the elitists who bow and scrape before the GOP establishment. I have no time to be picking up splinters.

I’ve recently left quite a few posts here in H.A. hoping to get more people involved in the fight. Did you miss all of those?

DannoJyd on February 17, 2013 at 2:10 PM

DannoJyd on February 17, 2013 at 2:19 PM

…bout time you got fired up!…who told you…you could take time off?
…there’s too many union contracts at this site!

RINO in Name Only on February 17, 2013 at 1:14 PM

PLEASE DO educate us all on what a MOBY is.

Is that someone who doesn’t bs us about how things like Romneycare [where is the freedom in ANY Mandate?]are conservative accomplishment? Is that one of the people that lets the GOP Elitists pick my candidate for me? I think everyone knows today how DISASTEROUSLY that always seems to work out.

Maybe a MOBY is one of the people that REFUSES to stand by and allow the corrupt-o-crats make up our minds for us.

Please, let’s do be relevant for a change.

People I would never support in the primary season: Sarah Palin, the fat Charlie Crist known as Chris Christie.

bluegill on February 17, 2013 at 7:55 AM

IMHO, people that put CONSERVATIVE Sarah Palin in the same paragraph as Abortion lovin, Romneycare supporting Christie REALLY need to BUY A CLUE!

Sarah Palin was named as King Maker from her successes in the 2010 election cycle. What have you done lately?

Wow!..What are you doing posting this early in the day my friend!!!..:)

PS..Beautiful piano..:)

Dire Straits on February 17, 2013 at 12:40 PM

Morning Mr. Dire. Outstanding song, love it, then and now. I usually post on and off all day. It is usually Dire that shows up vewy late. You must live in HI., or not sleep much. ;)

Ick! What am I saying.

Bmore on February 17, 2013 at 1:08 PM

LOL, we’ll let our imagination suffice. Hatred, envy and jealousy would not make a pretty picture tho.

Bump!!!..:)

Dire Straits on February 17, 2013 at 1:12 PM

Lol!

Bump!!!..:)

Dire Straits on February 17, 2013 at 1:12 PM

And I owe it all to you. Thanks for the set-up:)

I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!!!

I can’t speak to those old threads. But during the 2011/2012 time, there were many, many trolls on HA. Then up thru the Primaries until the Nomination of Romney they were still here. Then they dropped off and I haven’t seen any. Their job was done, they received their pay and now they are off somewhere else. Sure, some of them were banned, but I doubt there were that many that would account for their absence. That’s what I’ve seen anyway. Maybe others think something else.

bluefox on February 17, 2013 at 12:42 PM

I’ve always tended to be skeptical of the idea of paid trolls. It’s certainly possible and I’m sure it happens somewhere. But I doubt it’s as common as it often seems.

First off, I think the only way a candidate could get any mileage out of that kind of strategy would be to have people doing it all over the web – just working a few websites, even high traffic ones like hotair, would probably not really make a dent in people’s opinions. So the candidate would have to hire a substantial number of people. But that’s extremely risky – the more people involved in seething like this, the more likely it becomes that someone will get disgruntled and decide to play whistleblower.

The second thing is that weird, fanatical behavior is normal online – and politics in particular brings that out in people. So that isn’t necessarily much of an indicator of astroturfing.

Lastly, there’s another explanation that is very similar to the “paid troll” theory, and that’s the “enthusiastic activist” theory: you have people doing more or less all the disingenuous behavior that seems like it would come from a paid troll, but they do it for free. After the election, the battle is either won, or lost, and people don’t feel really impassioned enough to do their ridiculous online shenanigans until politics gets exciting again.

I tend to think the “enthusiastic activist” is more likely than the “paid troll”, simply because the former doesn’t require any organized malfeasance.

But really, I’m just speculating on all of this, so who knows?

As for the very first posters, I certainly don’t think they were mobys. I think they all just eventually moved on – some of them may have migrated over to Michelle Malkin’s own blog when she left, or to other blogs that they came to identify with more over time.

bluefox on February 17, 2013 at 12:59 PM

If only we had a photo of her.

Bmore on February 17, 2013 at 12:27 PM

LOL, ghastly! Before I clicked I thot it was going to be the ‘gill.