US Government to take on trolls
Bloggers: If you suddenly find Air Force officers leaving barbed comments after one of your posts, don’t be surprised. They’re just following the service’s new “counter-blogging” flow chart. In a twelve-point plan, put together by the emerging technology division of the Air Force’s public affairs arm, airmen are given guidance on how to handle “trolls,” “ragers” — and even well-informed online writers, too. It’s all part of an Air Force push to “counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force,” Captain David Faggard says.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I don’t fear anyone who’s uniform resembles a Greyhound bus driver’s.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Heaven forbid they should actually do something to address the reason for the negative opinion. Instead, let’s just counter the people!!!1!one!!
January 12th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Nice, thought police/
January 12th, 2009 at 10:50 am
So, I guess calling them the Chair Force or Defenders of America’s Coffee Cups is now going to get a predator drone outside my house?
January 12th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Have you ever seen an enlisted man try to argue a point on a message board? By and large they are utterly incapable of putting together a logical argument or conducting a conversation without resorting to personal attacks filled with obscenities.
The military is embarrassed by it.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:13 am
BWM: seriously? Wow, next you’ll be saying mexicans are lazy.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Peculiar, don’t you think? Most of the people I know, myself included hold opposing views of the military and the government that keeps abusing, misusing, and confusing them.
Most of the people I know have empathy, sympathy, and shared values with the military. The same can’t be said for their opinion of the government.
I have to agree with Wheeler. This program is akin to shooting your neighbor because he mentioned your roofer left a hole in your roof.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:49 am
David:
Seriously. Nearly everyone of them I’ve attempted to engage spurts out non sequiturs and strawmen like they are going out of style. When confronted they call me “faggot”, “terrorist”, “dumbass”, etc.
By the way, nice non sequiter.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Gee, BWM, just because your platoon sergeant put toner on your telephone earpiece dosen’t mean all enlisted men (and women, you sexist pig) are bad.
The biggest problem officers have now is their squad leaders have better degrees than they do.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
It’s hardly the fault of bloggers if the youngest service appears to want to ignore this war and wait for a better one.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Not so scary.
WWheeler,
According to the guidance, it is to do exactly what you want them to do. They are *not* to engage the people. It’s useless. They can’t be convinced anyway. But you can’t present a refutation message to everyone else if you don’t know what’s being said about you.
Every good PR firm keeps track of not only what their supports are saying about them, but also what their detractors are saying as well. You can’t tailor an appropriate message without knowing that information.
This way, the refutational message goes out through the standard public channels (where calling out an individual moonbat would be in poor taste) while preventing service members from going after the individual on a personal level.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
BWM: Being an Air Force member, I thought it was just the Army enlisted that were a bunch of brain-dead, personal insult lobbing dolts. I was just going off ASVAB scores, though. 😛
Seriously? I imagine that even I would wind up being censored or attacked. I so hated my management in my active duty years that I kept a written log of all the ridiculous and wasteful policies I saw put into effect. I had planned on wiring a book, in the fashion of Col. Hackworth- there was more than enough material!
While this is alarming, there are two thoughts that ease my anxiety. First, is that they should be targeting enemies of the state, not us. I know, I know- I said SHOULD. But the second thing that sets me at ease? The Air Force is a bureaucracy, and I’ve never seen a bureaucracy get anything accomplished in an efficient manner.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Over the years I’ve had a number of military public affairs types leave comments over at Murdoc Online. FWIW, I nearly always found their messages worth reading, informative, and on topic. In other words, nearly the exact opposite of the trolls they were countering.
They also left comments directed at me that corrected or expanded upon posts I wrote. Always in a respectful, conversational manner. Most of them seemed to by Army.
I never had a problem with it.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:03 am
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=non+sequitur
Before you try to sound smart, get your spelling right. And if you are going to complain about non sequitur arguments, don’t lead with one. Just a tip for next time you high-falutin’ types get together online to tell enlisted jokes.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I reckon I shuld not say nuttin here cus I may bee two stoopid, my ol grandaddy sez if you dont sez nutin peeple will think you stoopid, if youz open your mouth and sez somting then they knows fur sure.
DAD
US Army Retired
First Sergeant
January 13th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
TV news would be a better place to start, of course now that the lightworker is going to be president there won’t be any need there, talk radio will be shut down, so we see once again the air force headed off into the last frontier. “Just following orders”