2016 Postmortem

2016-06-03T17:54:44+00:00

Good afternoon. As of today, I am officially a former digital media specialist (a nice way to say paid Internet troll) previously employed by Hillary Clintons campaign (through a PR firm). Im posting here today as a confession of sorts because I can no longer continue to participate in something that has become morally-indigestible for me. (This is a one-time throwaway account, but Ill stick around for this thread.) First, my background. I am [redacted] and first became involved in politics during the 2008 presidential race. I worked as a volunteer for Hillary during the Democratic primary and then for the Democratic Party in the general election. I was not heavily involved in the 2012 election cycle (employment issues volunteering doesnt pay the rent), and I wasnt really planning on getting involved in this cycle until I was contacted by a friend from college around six months ago about working on Hillarys campaign. I was skeptical at first (especially after my experience as an unpaid volunteer in 2008), but I eventually came around. The work time and payment was flexible, and I figured that I could bring in a little extra money writing about things I supported anyways. After some consideration, I emailed my resume to the campaign manager he had named, and within a week, I was in play. I dont want to get bogged down on this subject, but I was involved with PPP (pay per post) on forums and in the comments section of (mostly-liberal) news and blog sites. Spending my time on weekends and evenings, I brought in roughly an extra $100 or so a week, which was a nice cushion for me. At first, the work was fun and mostly unsupervised. I posted mostly positive things about Hillary and didnt engage in much negativity. Around the middle of July, however, I received notification that the team would be focusing not on pro-Hillary forum management, but on mitigation (the term our team leader used) for a Vermont senator named Bernie Sanders. Id been out of college for several years and hadnt heard much about Sanders, and so I decided to do some research to get a feel for him. To be honest, I was skeptical of what Sanders was saying at the beginning, and didnt have much of a problem pointing out the reasons why I believed that Hillary was the better candidate. Over a period of two months, I gradually started to find Bernie appealing, even if I still disagreed with him on some issues. By September, I found myself as a closet Bernie supporter, though I still believed that Hillary was the only electable Democratic candidate. The real problem for me started around the end of September and the beginning of October, when there was a change of direction from the team leader again. Apparently, the higher-ups in the firm caught wind of an impending spending splurge by the Clinton campaign that month and wanted to put up an impressive display. We received very specific instructions about how and what to post, and I was aghast at what I saw. It was a complete change in tone and approach, and it was extremely nasty in character. We changed from advocates to hatchet men, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Just to give you an idea, here are some of the guidelines for our posting in October : 1) Sexism. This was the biggest one we were supposed to push. We had to smear Bernie as misogynistic and out-of-touch with modern sensibilities. He was to be characterized as an old white male relic that believed women enjoyed being gang raped. Anyone who tried to object to this characterization would be repeatedly slammed as sexist until they went away or people lost interest. 2) Racism. We were instructed to hammer home how Bernie supporters were all privileged white students that had no idea how the world worked. We had to tout Hillarys great record with the blacks (yes, thats the actual way it was phrased), and generally use racial identity politics to attack Sanders and bolster Hillary as the only unifying figure. 3) Electability. All of those posts about how Sanders can never win and Hillary is inevitable? Some of those were us, done deliberately in an attempt to demoralize Bernie supporters and convince them to stop campaigning for him. The problem is that this was an outright fabrication and not an accurate assessment of the current political situation. But the truth didnt matter we were trying to create a new truth, not to spread the existing truth. 4) Dirty tactics . This is where things got really bad. We were instructed to create narratives of Clinton supporters as being victimized by Sanders supporters, even if they were entirely fabricated. There were different instructions about how to do it, but something like this ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/31/1443064/-Dis-heartened-Hillary-Supporter ) is a perfect example. These kind of posts are manufactured to divide and demoralize Sanders supporters, and are entirely artificial in nature. (The same thing happened in 2008, but it wasnt as noticeable before social media and public attention focused on popular forums like Reddit). 5) Opponent outreach . There are several forums and imageboards where Sanders is not very popular (I think you can imagine which ones those are.) We were instructed to make pro-Sanders troll posts to rile up the user base and then try to goad them into raiding or attacking places like this subreddit. This was probably the only area where we only had mixed success, since that particular subset of the population were more difficult to manipulate than we originally thought. In any case, the final nail in the coffin for me happened last night. I was on an imageboard trying to rile up the Trump-supporting natives with inflammatory Bernie posting, and the sum of responses I received basically argued that at least Bernie was genuine in his belief, even if they disagreed with his positions, which made him infinitely better than the 100% amoral and power-hungry Hillary. I had one of those what are you doing with your life moments. When even the scum of 4chan think that your candidate is too scummy for their tastes, you need to take a good hard look at your life. Then this morning I read that the National Association of Broadcasters were bankrolling both Clinton and Rubio, and that broke the camels back. I emailed my resignation this morning. Im going to go all in for Bernie now, because I truly believe that the Democratic Party has lost its way, and that redemption can only come by standing for something right and not by compromising for false promises and fake ideals. I want to apologize to everyone here for my part in this nasty affair, and I hope you will be more aware of attempts to sway you away from supporting the only candidate that can bring us what we need. Confession of Hillary Shill from /r/SandersForPresident http://pastebin.com/qqNTbgkx

Post removed Fri Jun 3, 2016, 01:54 PM Jun 2016

Post removed

12 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Post removed (Original Post) Post removed Jun 2016 OP

the entire known universe conspires against poor helpless victim bernie. he wuz robbed! nt msongs Jun 2016 #1

Wrong - ciaobaby Jun 2016 #3

I used to be the Earl of Sandwich. MyNameGoesHere Jun 2016 #2

La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.....nothing to see here move along. haikugal Jun 2016 #4

And we are suppose to believe some anonymous itsrobert Jun 2016 #5

This was from Nov. 2015.. disillusioned73 Jun 2016 #6

Got credibility? Tal Vez Jun 2016 #7

Written by a Sanders supporter in November 2015. They were never paid to post a thing. nt. NCTraveler Jun 2016 #8

That was posted here several times in November of 2015, MineralMan Jun 2016 #9

Amazed SheenaR Jun 2016 #10

How many fake retread posts does this make? MattP Jun 2016 #11

reddit. lol Starry Messenger Jun 2016 #12

msongs

(67,634 posts)

1. the entire known universe conspires against poor helpless victim bernie. he wuz robbed! nt

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:02 PM

Jun 2016

ciaobaby

(1,000 posts)

3. Wrong -

Reply to msongs (Reply #1)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:04 PM

Jun 2016

Not the entire universe - just those paid by Hillary to create a narrative.

MyNameGoesHere

(7,638 posts)

2. I used to be the Earl of Sandwich.

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:04 PM

Jun 2016

Go on look it up it's on the internet.

haikugal

(6,476 posts)

4. La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.....nothing to see here move along.

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:05 PM

Jun 2016

K&R!!

itsrobert

(14,157 posts)

5. And we are suppose to believe some anonymous

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:06 PM

Jun 2016

Person on an internet forum? Nice try. Not that this has been posted several times in the last month, but gets no traction. And there is even BS supporters who are skeptical of this person.

Didnt the person posting that on reddit already admit he made it up?

disillusioned73

(2,872 posts)

6. This was from Nov. 2015..

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:13 PM

Jun 2016

I can't believe I never saw this before.. disgusting stuff

Tal Vez

(660 posts)

7. Got credibility?

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:14 PM

Jun 2016

Sheesh!

NCTraveler

(30,481 posts)

8. Written by a Sanders supporter in November 2015. They were never paid to post a thing. nt.

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:15 PM

Jun 2016

MineralMan

(146,384 posts)

9. That was posted here several times in November of 2015,

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:21 PM

Jun 2016

when it first appeared. Is it even true? We don't know, really, but we've seen it already.

SheenaR

(2,052 posts)

10. Amazed

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:24 PM

Jun 2016

That people will dismiss this as pure chicanery, despite several similar tales like this one.

But they will gobble up every nugget out of Rachel Maddow and Tweety's mouth.

Idk if it did or didn't happen. But every attack in this cycle mirrors the plan the author laid out.

MattP

(3,304 posts)

11. How many fake retread posts does this make?

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:35 PM

Jun 2016

Starry Messenger

(32,342 posts)

12. reddit. lol

Reply to Post removed (Original post)

Fri Jun 3, 2016, 02:36 PM

Jun 2016