Question of the Day: How do you spot a Concern Troll or Eeyore?(HillBuzz)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks to hoosiermama, I believe this is the post .. ya think, O? It’s on HillBuzz, but I thought I read it on Texas Darlin. It could’ve been cross posted.

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Ok, I want to clear my conscious a little. Hopefully you could make a blog post to help some fellow clinton supporters out.

I work for a campaign and can’t wait for this week to be over.

I was doing it for a job. I was not a fan of any candidate but over time grew to love HRC.

The internal campaign idea is to twist, distort, humiliate and finally dispirit you.

We pay people and organize people to go to all the online sites and “play the part of a clinton or mccain supporter who just switched our support for obama”

We do this to stifle your motivation and to destroy your confidence.

We did this the whole primary and it worked.

Sprinkle in mass vote confusion and it becomes bewildering. Most people lose patience and just give up on their support of a candidate and decide to just block out tv, news, websites, etc.

This surprisingly has had a huge suppressing movement and vote turnout issues.

Next, we infiltrate all the blogs and all the youtube videos and overwhelm the voting, the comments, etc. All to continue this appearance of overwhelming world support.

People makes posts to the effect that the world has “gone mad”

Thats the intention. To make you feel stressed and crazy and feel like the world is ending.

We have also had quite a hand in skewing many many polls, some we couldn’t control as much as we would have liked. But many we have spoiled over. Just enough to make real clear politics look scarey to a mccain supporter. Its worked, alough the goal was to appear 13-15 points ahead.

see, the results have been working. People tend to support a winner, go with the flow, become “sheeple”

The polls are roughly 3-5 points in favor of Barack. Thats due to our inflation of the polls and pulling in the sheeple.

Our donors, are the same people who finance the MSM. Their interests are tied, Barack then tends to come across as teflon. Nothing sticks. And trust, there were meetings with Fox news. The goal was to blunt them as much as possible. Watch Bill Oreilly he has become much more diplomatic and “fair and balanced” and soft.

Its because he wants to retain the #1 spot on cable news and to do that he has to have access to the Obama campaign and we worked hard at stringing him a long and keeping him soft for an interview swap. It worked and now he is anticipating more access. So he is playing it still soft.

This is why nothing sticks.

The operation is massive, the goal is to paint a picture that is that of a winner, regardless of the results.

There is no true inauguration draft or true grant park construction going on. There will be a party, but we are boasting beyond the truth to make it seem like the election is wrapped up.

Our goal is to continue to make you lose your moral. We worked hard at persuasion and paying off and timing and playing the right political numbers to get key republican endorsements to make it seem even more like it was over and the world was coming to an end for you all.

There is a huge staff of people working around the clock, watching every site, blogs, etc. We flood these sites. We have had a goal to overwhelm.

The truth is here. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

I am saying this because I know HRC was better for the country, and now realize this. I was too late by the time I connected to her. To me Barack was just a cool young dude that seemed like a star. I didn’t know him or his policies, but now I understand more than I care to and I realize his interests are more for him, and the DNC and all working like puppets with dean.

I always thought a president wanted the better good for the country. The end result I see is everyone dependent on the government, this means more and more people voting for the DNC. This means the future is forever altered. I don’t see this as america, so I am now supporting John Mccain.

Sarah Palin is a huge threat, and our campaign has feared her like you can’t imagine. If it seems unfair how she has been treated, well its because she has had a team working round the clock to make her look like a fool.

this is a big conspiracy and I am so shocked that its not realized.

We released a little blurb the other day that the Obama campaign was already working on reelection and now putting our efforts towards 2012. This was to make it seem like it was above us to continue caring about 2008. Trust me, its a lie. David is very smart, but its a sticky ugly not very truthful kind of intelligence.

Its not over yet, but I think the machine is working. And its a hill to climb.

I will be quitting my post on nov 5th and my vote will be for John Mccain. Fortunately, my position has been a marketing position and I don’t feel I had any part of anything I would feel guilty for. But I look forward to getting out of this as the negativity and environment upsets me.

I wish you all well, and goodluck.

PS my name is not really sarah. but I am a female and I understand your plight.

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