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Question of the Day: How do you spot a Concern Troll or Eeyore?(HillBuzz)
HillBuzz ^ | 1-10-10

Posted on 01/10/2010 3:01:15 PM PST by STARWISE

Some of you have asked us to further explain the difference between Concern Trolls and Eeyores. Well, here goes.

Concern Troll = someone who posts on a board, forum, or article and says things like:

* “You know, I really like Scott Brown, but it’s Massachusetts, and even though he’s had a surge, it’s Massachusetts, so we should stop phone-banking or working hard and just give up. It’s Massachusetts”.

* “Oh, I’ve been so proud of how hard Hillary Clinton has been fighting, but there’s no way she’s going to win Ohio. This is the best board ever, and we all love Hillary, but I heard on MSNBC that Obama has it all sewed up, so for the good of the party she should just quit and drop out of the race. I like her, but I think we need to just give up now.”

* “You know, I didn’t like Sarah Palin at first, but then, wow, she gave a great speech at the convention and I think she has a good heart. Such cute kids, too! But, really, I hate to say she’s not ready yet to be Vice President, but she’s not. I think we just need to accept that and move on”.

Concern Trolls use a lot of “I Statements”, the kind bad therapists tell sociopaths to use more of so that they trick parole boards into releasing them. “I think”, “I feel”, “I believe”, etc. They have a three-pronged, four or five sentence max, little system:

(A) Establish some positive connection to whatever the thread is about, but using “I Statements” to say things like: “I like Scott Brown”, “I didn’t like Sarah Palin at first but”, “I’ve been so proud of Hillary Clinton”, etc.

The example about Palin is good because one of the other things they try to do is establish some sort of false-honesty by seemingly admitting something to the board, so that they generate a fake credibility, among other oxymorons.

“I didn’t like her at first, but, now I do, and I’ve thus established you can trust me because I shared that secret, now listen to me when I tell you to sit your butts home and let Democrats win. Otay? Buh-bye!”

(B) Tell everyone they all worked hard and note how impressed the troll is with all of you (“This is the best board ever!”), and then express “concern” that people are getting their hopes up too much and that people need to not waste their energy on the task at hand. “We’ve all worked hard, but now it is time to give up and do nothing so that Democrats can catchup and beat us”.

(C) Flat-out, using “I Statements”, tell everyone to just give up, but without making imperative statements that would come off as commands and piss people off. So, they don’t say, “You have to just stop and give up now so Democrats can win”.

Instead, they say, “I think we’re all just really tired. We put up a good fight. But the Boston Globe poll says Coakley’s ahead by 15 points, and it is Massachusetts, so we should just all put our diapers on, sit in the corner, and fill them, all day, doing nothing productive, until someone can come and change us. That’s what I am going to do, and I have been the biggest supporter of our candidate ever. I love this board!”

Concern trolls are often, but not always, paid operatives who quite possibly work in little boutique PR and Public Strategies consulting firms in major cities. Chicago has DOZENS of these. We know — we’ve worked in these offices. Where do you think we learned everything we tell you?

********

Eeyores are different from Concern Trolls even if the end result is the same, to demoralize supporters of one candidate so the other candidate can win.

We came up with the term Eeyores to describe people in our ranks during the Clinton campaign who would depress other volunteers with their pessimism, negativity, and “there’s no way we can win!” nonsense.

These are people who get all their news from CNN and MSNBC without realizing that CNN and MSNBC have agendas and deliberately lie to push them.

Eeyores LOVE emailing people negative articles. It’s sick, actually.

During the Clinton campaign, honest to goodness, we were stretched so thin it wasn’t funny. We worked full time, then raced home every day to run phone banks for Clinton out of Buzzquarters where we had volunteers come to make calls into all the primary and caucus states. EVERY NIGHT. Strangers would come over to use our apartment to make phone banking calls.

EVERY NIGHT. We had to clean, to bake, to get pizza, to have all the phone scripts printed. EVERY NIGHT. We slept, at most, two hours, maybe three, a night in those days. It was insane. We put every cent, every bit of energy, into campaigning for Clinton.

And then, there, in our email boxes, every day we’d find email after email from Eeyores, one particularly “O-bother!”-some one in particular, with CNN and MSNBC articles attached telling us we should just give up and quit.

“CNN says she can’t win New Hampshire!”. “MSNBC says she won’t win Pennsylvania!”. “Anderson Cooper says she’s going to lose New York! NEW YORK!?!?! We’re DOOMED! DOOMED! DOOMED!”.

The key difference here is this: concern trolls WANT you to give up; Eeyores don’t want you to give up and don’t want the opponent to win, but don’t realize they are sabotaging all efforts you’re making.

Concern Trolls DELIBERATELY lower morale.

Eeyores lower morale unintentionally.

They just can’t shut their damn mouths and need to keep venting their pessimism, spreading their little black rainclouds everywhere. It’s frustrating.

Eeyores are actually FAR MORE DANGEROUS and harder to deal with, because they are often your friends. In our case, with Hillary Clinton, Eeyores were people we liked very much — but the time and energy it took to keep these people propped up, and to talk them down off ledges they got on whenever Tim Russert starting bellowing “Just quit already!” really distracted us from other things we needed to do.

It cost us AT LEAST three essays a day we could have written…about 100 phone calls a day we could have made…or just plain old sleep we missed because we were refuting, bit by bit, everything the MSNBC/CNN propaganda machine was putting out there to discourage Hillary’s voters and lower our turnout on election day.

Exhausting!

HillBuzz itself, this site, exists because of Eeyores, actually.

It’s why we started this site, because the constant emails from 50 or so of these people on our list of 500 volunteers took so much time to address that we just started posting what we would have written to these people individually on this site.

We never intended this to be a national site. It was strictly for Chicago Hillary volunteers, so we could share articles to refute what the MSM propaganda machine was doing, and to give people tips to fight Concern Trolls and combat Eeyorism in their own midst.

Evidently, there’s still a need for this, because here we are two years later and we’re still at it.

We’d love it if you could add to this thread your own experiences with Concern Trolls and Eeyores. Republican sites we visit are chock full of Eeyores.

It’s one of the two things we notice about Republican men in their 20s-30s: they are the most Eeyore prone, gullible people we’ve ever known.

The media says it’s all over, and these Marys pack it all in, drop their pants, grab their diapers, and fudge themselves in the corner — on cue. Ridiculous.

The other thing we notice is that Republicans guys, for all the homophobic crap they sling (at least in Chicago), sure love wearing tight, tight khacki pants and get MIGHTY friendly after their, like 7th, Jack and Coke or whatever.

There sure are stories we could tell you from the Palin VP Watch Party…the McCain Debate Watch parties…or from Election Night that make our tales of Boystown pale in comparison.

Eeyores and closet cases, so, so many of them. At least in Chicago anyway.


TOPICS: Government; Politics; Reference
KEYWORDS: blogs; concerntrolls; dems; eeyores; hillbuzz; operatives; scottbrown
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Pretty interesting and familiar descriptions ...
1 posted on 01/10/2010 3:01:15 PM PST by STARWISE
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To: penelopesire; seekthetruth; television is just wrong; jcsjcm; BP2; Pablo Mac; April Lexington; ...

~~HillBuzzers .. Axelturfing 2.0 .. PING!


2 posted on 01/10/2010 3:03:20 PM PST by STARWISE (.They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: Sarah Barracuda; GOP_Lady; MeekOneGOP

~~PING!


3 posted on 01/10/2010 3:07:32 PM PST by STARWISE (.They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: STARWISE

Rather common here on FR.


4 posted on 01/10/2010 3:07:41 PM PST by FReepaholic (My other tagline is hilarious.)
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To: STARWISE
Looks like some good ole fashion Freudian projection going on...Seen alot of that here also.


5 posted on 01/10/2010 3:09:53 PM PST by darkwing104 (Lets get dangerous)
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To: STARWISE
"Concern troll" is the description we have been needing to nail down the backstabbing anti-Palin bedwetters who infest the GOP and even FR.
6 posted on 01/10/2010 3:11:58 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: STARWISE; PennsylvaniaMom; SoCalPol; hoosiermama; CAluvdubya; Daisyjane69; Hildy; ...

Timely, timely posting, my dear!


7 posted on 01/10/2010 3:14:04 PM PST by onyx
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To: STARWISE
"We came up with the term Eeyores to describe people in our ranks during the Clinton campaign who would depress other volunteers with their pessimism, negativity, and 'there’s no way we can win!' nonsense."

It's a shame that they use the term "we" to describe their sycophantic idolization of a political shark who doesn't know or care about them. "You" are a nobody who serves as a stepping-stone for "her," peasant.

8 posted on 01/10/2010 3:18:05 PM PST by Anti-Utopian ("Come, let's away to prison; We two alone will sing like birds I' th' cage." -King Lear [V,iii,6-8])
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To: STARWISE

Am I supposed to accept the words of an admitted Hillary fanatic?


9 posted on 01/10/2010 3:21:17 PM PST by matt1234
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To: STARWISE

Very familiar.

I love HillBuzz, thanks for posting.


10 posted on 01/10/2010 3:21:45 PM PST by baseballmom (Philadelphia Phillies - 2009 National League Champions)
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To: STARWISE

Eeyores and Concern Trolls: 2 new terms added to my lexicon. Thanks.


11 posted on 01/10/2010 3:24:48 PM PST by Bryanw92 (Imagine a day when the politicians have to hold a bake sale to pay for votes!)
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To: STARWISE
Pretty interesting and familiar descriptions ...

Isn't it though.

12 posted on 01/10/2010 3:24:56 PM PST by Bahbah (Only dead fish go with the flow)
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To: onyx

Great description, downthread of a “purist” as well. Purity...what an internet concept.

;)


13 posted on 01/10/2010 3:27:55 PM PST by PennsylvaniaMom (BOOM! Taste my nightstick! Sarah, making Shatner sound Shakespearean.)
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To: PennsylvaniaMom

LOL. I thought of you straight away as soon as I read this because you used the word Eeyore today in your post to me!


14 posted on 01/10/2010 3:32:42 PM PST by onyx
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To: onyx

Could make a long list of FReeper names who fit the Concern Troll and Eeyore category


15 posted on 01/10/2010 3:37:47 PM PST by SoCalPol (Reagan Republican for Palin 2012)
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To: onyx
Thanks for the ping!

Boy, do we sure have both of these here! The concern trolls are out in force over Scott Brown.

Does Concern troll fit the "that candidate isn't conservative enough so we should not vote and let the extreme lib win" poster? I wonder....

16 posted on 01/10/2010 3:41:18 PM PST by CAluvdubya (Palin 2012...YOU BETCHA!.)
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To: Anti-Utopian

Well .. guess what? He’s describing what
goes on in politics today .. both parties
and both lib and conservative forums, blogs,
etc.

Lots of us recognize those very tactics
being used regularly here.


17 posted on 01/10/2010 3:42:05 PM PST by STARWISE (.They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: SoCalPol

LOL. I think that’s the idea of this posting.
Be on the alert and recognize them for what they are: Concern trolls or Eeoyores. It might take some practice to get it right...lol...so I have saved the article.


18 posted on 01/10/2010 3:42:46 PM PST by onyx
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To: onyx

Not unfamiliar ... huh ?

LOL ...


19 posted on 01/10/2010 3:43:28 PM PST by STARWISE (.They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: hinckley buzzard

It is pretty apt, isn’t it ? LOL ..


20 posted on 01/10/2010 3:44:58 PM PST by STARWISE (.They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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