DU Tactics at FreeRepublic

FreeRepublic | 4/3/07 | Reaganesque

[Reaganesque]

It is always disappointing to be reminded that there are people in the world who do not like you so much that they are willing to debase themselves and others in order to get their way. We, as conservatives face this from the Left on a day to day basis. But when such action comes from another supposed Conservative, that is truly disappointing.

The posters at DU think nothing of swearing and posting the most filthy, perverted and twisted things about their political rivals. We here at FR are, for the most part, better than that. At least we try to be. Unfortunately, there's always someone who proves that both sides have their ugly side.

I have posted a number of pro-Mitt Romney threads recently as have many others. I discovered this afternoon that several of them have been the victims of childish and down right purile dirty tricks. Now, political dirty tricks are nothing new and nor are they uncommon on either side of the aisle. But some simply cross the line of decency. Such is the case with whomever played their little game of messing with the Keywords on these Pro-Romney threads. Here are four examples:

Romney Tops Republicans in Fundraising
KEYWORDS: ANTICHRIST; CULT; FUNDRAISING; MITTRAPESCHILDREN; ROMNEY; Click to Add Keyword

Why I Think You Should Vote For My Dad
KEYWORDS: 2008; ELECTIONPRESIDENT; ELECTIONS; MITTBEATSHISKIDS; MITTISTHEANTICHRIST; ROMNEY; Click to Add Keyword

Parsing the Polls: Answering the Mormon Question

KEYWORDS: CULT; JOEYSMITHDELUSION; Click to Add Keyword

Romney-Thompson Ticket?

KEYWORDS: ELECTION; FRED; FREDTHOMPSON; MITTISTHEANTICHRIST; ROMNEY; THOMPSON; VP; Click to Add Keyword

People, campaigning can be a hard and painful thing. You have to have a thick skin to run for office and heaven knows, all candidates take their blows, some more than others. But there is such a thing as decency. And this little prank doesn't just cross that line, it obliterates it.

Disagree with the thread? Fine. Present your arguments. You don't like the candidate? Great. Tell me why and make an attempt at intelligent conversation. That's the way this place is supposed to work. But, resorting to such sophomoric, vulgar and quite frankly bigoted childishness is beneath contempt. If you can't manage a reasonable level of maturity, then there's a whole bunch of like minds over at DU you can have fun with.

[mkjessup]

Don’t you think it is kind of tacky for someone to talk about the nice checks they have written? How totally tacky. Is this supposed to be a threat to those who do not wish Rudy to be our candidate? Shut up or we will cut off our bucks.

It is the height of tackiness. The poster in question reminds me of somebody's snooty great aunt who seeks to express her disapproval by writing people out of her will, and striking them from the guest list for Christmas dinner, and never sending them birthday cards again, all because she happened to get a whiff of someone's flatulence.

IOW, "it's air lady, give it a few seconds and take a fresh breath, and get on with whatever is left of your life."

The incessant whining of the RudyBots is astounding, they treat any criticism of their boy as being 'abusive', 'lies', 'misrepresentations', blah-blah-blah, and their only defense is to begin sneering and insulting OTHER candidates, and when they are confronted with the truth, they immediately flee the thread with no further comment. A great example of this is the following post (the last post in the thread I might add) the other night after poster 'Peach' was whining ad nauseum about being 'accused' of attacking Congressman Duncan Hunter's wife, when no such thing happened as I had to explain, step-by-step to her as follows:

Peach - So why did you mention Mrs. Hunter at all in your post? And before you go quoting someone, you might wish to see if what they're saying is accurate.

MKJ - I mentioned Mrs. Hunter because Apocalypto responded to your gal pal Veronica who said in #199:

Veronica - "MEOW. That's what it's come to. Attacking her looks. How shallow can you get? What do you do for a living?? She's a nurse you know. Ever done a job that difficult? We need to find a picture of Duncan Hunter's wife. Is there one out there??" #199 posted on 04/01/2007 3:48:58 PM EDT by veronica"

MKJ - Sooooo you see sweet lil Peach, -you- were never accused of 'trashing Duncan Hunter's wife', you were given a complimentary CC by Apocalypto as HE was responding to Veronica who was only too eager to find a picture of Mrs. Hunter, and no doubt give her the 'treatment'. You need to work on that case of premature exasperation you're experiencing there kiddo, because what Apocalypto was responding to was 100 percent accurate."

--------------------------------------------

And curiously enough, the thread ended right there. Why? Because it was time for the RudyBot agitators to move on to greener pastures.

[Fierce Allegiance]

See post #107, where the mod posted every keyword and who posted it when.

[Fierce Allegiance]

Want to see juvenile? See the exchange between oldfriend and peach here, starting at post #70 through 83. And they say they are the ones with class. LMAO!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1811747/posts?page=82#82

[GovernmentIsTheProblem]

peach and oldfriend are calling rudy-opponents gay by suggesting they are getting married or somesuch.

Taking the high road again I see.

I have a lovely link to a response of mine to Peach on my fr homepage. Peach constantly manufactures reasons to be insulted and avoid responding to primary source material that rebuts her. It’s pathetic.

[Elyse]

Yes you are right we don’t trash other candidates.....and yes that does make us more mature, gracious and intelligent. If you find that patronizing look in the mirror.

Well, I never said that Rudy supporters don't trash other candidates, but thank you for proving my point, anyway.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Outstanding!!

BUMP!

[My2Cents]

to expose the plan you all have made at your other gathering site. You know, the place where you plan your spin and vent your dislike for conservatives and people of faith.

First, FreeRepublic isn't important enough to waste time "plotting against." The other site is a breath of fresh air...not the smell of stale old farts that FR has become.

[Fierce Allegiance]

pathetic

Perfect term.

[Chena]

If anything exemplifies the difference look at the Elizabeth Edwards thread here compared to their Tony Snow thread.

Perfect example! Thank you.

[Fierce Allegiance]

Wideawakes is an AntiFReep site and is populated with several Clown Posse members as well. All members there should be block-banned from FR.

[mkjessup]

First, FreeRepublic isn't important enough to waste time "plotting against." The other site is a breath of fresh air...not the smell of stale old farts that FR has become.

Don't like it here pal?

GTF out.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

First, FreeRepublic isn't important enough to waste time "plotting against." The other site is a breath of fresh air...not the smell of stale old farts that FR has become

Then why are you here?

[beeber]

This is just wrong. It should not be tolerated!

(I am notifying the mods about this post... possible 'troll' alert! Hugh and series!)

[auto power]

You are absolutely right beeber....

[stephenjohnbanker]

53 year old stale fart reporting for FR duty, ma’am : )

[SJackson]

See post #107, where the mod posted every keyword and who posted it when.

Thanks. I was thinking about keywords like MITTRAPESCHILDREN; MITTBEATSHISKIDS; MITTISTHEANTICHRIST which takes things to a very different place. I'd like to see that done more often.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Ah! Hugh Series. Author of “Wally and the Beeber”

Bump!

[Corin Stormhands]

Do you think the Democrats wanted Virginia to know that Allen was virtually dogged by the Macacca guy?

Oh believe me, I lived through the Macaca incident.

But, by your logic, it's okay for FReepers to engage in the same tactics as the left.

Sorry, that doesn't fly with me. We know they're going to lie and distort. It's all they have.

But, if we're going to be the party of integrity, we should actually have some.

[George W. Bush]

Thanks for posting this. You're right that these kinds of keywords are way way way over the top.

Do we really want our forum to pop up at the top of a Google search list a search like, say, 'mitt child rapist'? I don't think so.

And our own server has to work harder to perform keyword searches as a result of this nonsense.

It causes our own keyword searches to return false results and makes it harder to search the forum and get good keyword search results.

This kind of thing is as cowardly as you can get at FreeRepublic. It's the FR equivalent of scribbling "Judy So-And-So Is Easy" on the wall of a men's bathroom back in high school (now, hey, it's just a coincidence that I used the name of the wife of the GOP candidate I most oppose as an example but it illustrates my point: I'll take any heat for it and I don't expect more anonymity than I already have via my screenname). This kind of keyword abuse is nothing more than forum graffiti, a kind of vandalism. It has no dignity and needlessly inflames a lot of threads, especially these candidate threads.

In fact, we should call these folks Keyword Kowards. Because that's exactly what they are. Apparently, even posting anonymously on an Internet forum is too risky for them so they resort to this trashing of the threads and burdening our server and polluting keyword search results for their variety of toilet humor. Yep, being anonymous isn't enough and they're not brave enough to actually sign their names to a post with something like 'mittantichrist'.

I've added some tough keywords in the past. But I'm not afraid for other FReepers to know my screenname when I add a hard-edged keyword to the list because I generally post pretty blunt opinions on those same threads and take the heat, if any, for it. So, for instance, I just added the keyword "COPRESIDENTRIX" to a Giuliani thread (a reference to Giuliani's recent appearance on 20/20). I don't care if anyone knows it. If they don't like it they can bash on me. I'm tough enough to take it, hiding behind my anonymous screenname here at FR. Gee, what courage that requires, eh?

Maybe JohnRob would consider adding the screennames of those who add Keywords as a tooltip for that keyword. Or, perhaps better, a link to a page which lists the keywords each screenname has added to a particular thread (takes less bandwidth). Although these would marginally increase server bandwidth and disk storage of the keywords portion of a thread, I think you'd find that there would be a lot less keyword spam so it would balance out in terms of bandwidth and disk space. Beyond that, if the Keyword Kowards knew they couldn't do this without exposing themselves to everyone on a thread, there would be a lot less policing required by the moderators. They have plenty to do already without having to patrol for Keyword Trolls.

Anyway, if the Robinsons are considering some new forum features, maybe this is something they could discuss with the moderators and look at the bandwidth tradeoffs. Obviously, the forum software can already list keywords and the IP addresses and screennames of those who post them. So it wouldn't take more than a few lines of Perl code to implement something like this.

Too much anonymity isn't a good thing for our forum. It invites Keyword Kowards to abuse the forum with their bathroom-wall attacks.

Our rights to free speech doesn't guarantee anonymous speech. And using anonymous screennames already shields us. So there really is no free speech issue involved here. Why reward the thread vandals?

[beeber]

Jon Carry reporting for dooty!