Sock-puppets and Trolls

This is a pastoral blog and is privately hosted; it’s not linked to the WordPress community. There’s not a lot of traffic and that’s fine. I’m trying to serve a small audience that is actually interested in what I have to say. Yes, I want the message to spread, but the message is not just words. The message is souls walking in the Covenant of Christ, people who don’t live in their heads but in their hearts. It’s counter to the mainstream, and the only way this message can really spread is if people live the truth, whether they read this blog or not.

For all that, I still have trolls from time to time. There have always been damaged people around since before the Net came into existence. They simply delight in watching others suffer; it’s their whole reason for remaining conscious. They are cowards, typically hiding their identity to avoid repercussions. On a blog like this, it’s easy enough to delete their comments and ignore them. When they cross certain lines, I may take what little action is possible. I’ve managed to have a few kicked off their ISP.

I’ve had a few sock-puppets, too. They also hide their identity because they have some incentive to make trouble. They can be used for purposes many applaud, such as baiting child molesters online so they can be arrested. Sometime back around the late 1990s I began hearing about this phenomena of government agents who managed up to a hundred false personas on the Net, infiltrating various social media platforms and quite a few private forums and email discussion groups. Your tax dollars at work! They serve the double duty of surveillance and propaganda. Surveillance is one thing; that’s ubiquitous on the Net. Interfering in the communications via PsyOp is another thing.

This has gotten to be a whole industry in itself. Some are military, some civil service, but a great many are simply under contract. As you might expect, the typical infighting among federal agencies can result in some hilarious outcomes. It’s the same kind of thing where more than one federal agency has undercover agents infiltrating an organization and trying to arrest each other.

I’ve got one sock-puppet hanging around this blog right now. I’ll refer to it as a “he” because of the nature of the persona. This one pretends to be a Klan/Nazi type. Here’s the thing: I’ve known some real Klan people, and Nazis, too. They are nothing like the popular portrayal; your local Baptist, Methodist or other small town church is likely to have them, just like they have Freemasons. The doctrine of the church isn’t consistent with either the Freemason, Klan or Nazi agenda, but that doesn’t stop them. On the other hand, since at least the late 1980s, not a single organized Klan/Nazi group that you can find is real, especially the ones with an online presence. Patriot Front? It’s 100% FBI. And most of the others are varying mixtures of other enforcement agents and a few are even private investigators. Nobody who is actually in the Klan, for example, would have anything to do with them; they’ve known about it for a long time. I found out about that from a Klan member in the military.

One of the best ways to recognize a sock-puppet is how over-the-top they are, totally unlike a real Klan or Nazi type. Another way is to learn about IP addresses. Most WordPress users pay no attention to the feature that reveals to you the IP address of every commenter. If you take the time to learn about how those addresses are used and distributed, you can learn a lot about someone from their IP address. My current harassment comes from someone using an AT&T mobile account that traces back to Redmond, WA. That doesn’t mean they are there in the city, but that their AT&T account is there. The name is different every time, but the nature of the comments are very consistent. I can’t tell you for certain this is some government agent, but it’s a high probability.

Someone asked me how Catacomb Resident knew he was being surveilled. If the hosting provider was hit with a Patriot Act demand, he wouldn’t be allowed to tell. And he said his host never said anything, but stopped communicating altogether. That was a clue in itself. But the real answer is that Catacomb Resident recognized some email comments as highly probable sock-puppets. I know that I’ve prayed over every comment I get here, and I’m sure that’s how a lot of faith writers do things. There was also the IP addresses that showed up in the access logs; they show patterns that some people can recognize, and we pray over those, too. Still, our God is real; He communicates with His servants. When God says the mission is accomplished, you close it down and go do something else. The surveillance was apparent for quite some time, but the blog stood until that one last message was posted. He said something about getting a divine “attaboy” in his spirit.

I believe we need to get used to the idea that we are very few indeed, and God is the only one who can change that. There is nothing to gain by seeking to advertise and shake the whole world with our message. We didn’t move people to faith by our Net presence; all we did is let people who already had faith see they weren’t alone. Our kind of faith is rare because the starting point is always small. Jesus started with just eleven dedicated men. Despite what you may think, we don’t have the advantages they did. Their world was wide open to faith; ours is so jaded it will take some major disasters to shake them loose.

That day is coming. If not the human idiocy that we see on a global scale today, in twenty years or so God is going to wipe most of humanity from the face of the earth. The solar disasters are coming and it’s going to a hellish Noah experience. Just a few will survive. You can bet that among those survivors will be people of faith. His message will never be lost from among humans. As long as people breathe air, the Lord is there to call out His own. On the outside chance the Lord chooses some of us to survive that catastrophes, we need to nail down as best we can a life of faith. We need to clarify and solidify God’s Law for living. The message of revelation must be clear in how we live.