It's not an urban legend. It's just part of the marketing.
If I were managing a political campaign - which I have no interest in doing - I'd employ the same tactics. I have to say though, I'd avoid some of them; and would set higher standards for others.
A little explanation is probably needed for these types of attack evident on this group by the TP supporters attempting to disrupt the flow of conversations:
- responding to comments (form those outside the team) with threats of being reported as "plagiarism", "slander" , "libel", or some other legal term
- Ad hominem attacks - denigrating and insulting other contributors personally; not challenging their logic or facts
- Sniping,
- Flooding.
- Ambushing: someone posting anything positive or supportive of the President or administration - comment, citations, or facts - was quickly jumped on by one or more of the team
- Misrepresentation
These attacks were used to identify the TP team members, and their intentions on the forum.
Legalistic threats.The most common legal threat on this forum for months was plagiarism.
When a team member copied a whole article from the Net into the discussion, the threat didn't come. But if someone outside the team did the same, the threat of plagiarism was made repeatedly until someone dispelled it.
If the person responded to the team member vehemently, the person would be told a lawyer would be contacted to sue for slander or libel.
The threats became serious. More than one person checked with their lawyers sincerely intending to sue the disrupting TP team members; others reported the TP team members to law enforcement. This may have been one of the reasons the team has become quieter recently.
Personal attacks, or ad hominem attacks, by the team were common. As described above, too often others took the bait and a flame war resulted.
One of the most common forms of ad hominem attack is Name Calling or Labeling. Name Calling is juvenile and pointless. It adds nothing to the discussion but anger. It's simply baiting the other person into a Flame War.
Labeling can be a touchy subject in political debate, however. Calling someone a "commie" is childish and useless, but saying their ideas sound 'communist' or 'socialist' has to be allowed.
Sniping is the most common means of to disrupt the flow of a discussion because it's the easiest to do. The purpose of Sniping is to force the posts on the topic from view.
Sniping means simply posting many short posts in a series.
One short post can be called sniping if the references are unclear, but it's not an effective disruption.
As series of short posts, usually with slogans or short insults at the end, will quickly force the screen containing the useful discussion to scroll out of view. Those who want to continue on the topic are forced to scroll up and down.
If the Sniping is obnoxious enough, a Flame War results.
Another version of Sniping is to respond to someone's much older posts without giving a reference. The person is attacked but has no idea why.
LinkedIn problem
The sniping tactic was particularly successful on LinkedIn because the discussions are not threaded. Each post comes after the other. It's very hard using LinkedIn's forum facilities to see posts even a few minutes old.
It's easy to create a dozen or more sniping posts.
Flooding is simply filling the screen with long, verbose posts to force any other discussion from view. As with sniping, it works very well because of LinkedIn's programming.
Clif's brain dumps function as Flooding often. I doubt he intends them as Flooding though. His 4-8 page posts drive any other topic from view. It's not very polite, as Netiquette goes, and often good discussions and topics are lost.
Ambushing is used to ensure no useful discussion results from a thoughtful essay or posted idea. It entails using all other forms of attack.
Misrepresentation can be incorporated into any of the other styles of attack, and is especially disruptive because of the passions on a political forum.
There are two common versions of misrepresentation.
- The first version is when something is taken from the Web. TP advocates on this forum have often been caught using doctored citations - where the information is changed then posted - or where the reference supposedly supports the post, but has little or nothing to do with it.
(Because of this habit, people have learned to always fact check the TP team members.)
- The second version is ad hominem.
The team member copies a portion of someone else's post either out of context or changes the original text, then attacks it. It's considered ad hominem because it is the person's own words that are being changed and attacked.
(This method is commonly used to set up a 'straw man' attack - where the person is attacked for something they didn't say or mean.)
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