Tag: astroturf

Scientology Photoshop

thankfully for religions everywhere, photoshop is there to help with any miracles you may wish to procure.

The Washington Times reported that the Church of Scientology denies that it doctored this photo. We compared Scientology’s photo of the crowd (which it estimated at 2500) against photos taken by our correspondents (the crowd was more like 450 people) and pointed out that an entire row of shrubs had somehow been erased and there were people seemingly standing in a street that was actually empty. The church has been caught manipulating crowd shots in the past to inflate attendance at its events.

A glut of Ninjas

i had no idea unemployment was so bad. social media maven is what someone calls himself when they are between jobs.

As a public service, I like to periodically check in on the number of self-proclaimed social media “gurus,” “ninjas,” “masters” and “mavens” on Twitter. Why? Well, it seems like an important metric, an indicator of something.

Whatever it means, this is one indicator that is most definitely on the rise. In January 2013, the number of Twitter users with “social media” as part of their bio has grown to epic proportions. The list now tops 181K – up from a mere 16K when we first started tracking them in 2009

Alternate realities

the fun of watching the crazies self-destructing will be with us for a while:

Clearly, the only explanation for all this delusion is that conservative media and campaign consultants, steeped in years of confidently lying about everything from global warming to the causes of the deficit, got a little too bold about their ability to create their own realities. The only question is whether conservatives will learn their lesson and exhibit more skepticism about their self-selected news media in the future. The answer is almost surely no, for a very good reason: Conservative credulousness is so baked into the culture of the right that it could well be considered a defining feature.

Military Astroturfers

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented 10000s of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance

if you get your “analysis” from an old talking head on tv, you get what you deserve

Lying Media

American media is complicit in an immoral propaganda campaign against China. Now that 2 Chinese officials are dead over the fiasco, the Vice President of Mattel admits that the news was all lies. “The vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel’s design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China’s manufacturers.” It’s a bad day indeed for America when the VP of a toy company comes across as being more honest and transparent than the American media.

2007-11-30: another industry that deserves to, and will, die.

Now I want to highlight the subscription offers that magazines send through the mail. They’re full of lies. Here’s one I got today, which I’ve taken the liberty of annotating:


2013-03-28: when legacy media feeds technopanic you gotta wonder about ulterior motives. creating fear to stave off christensen style obsolescence?

What’s not OK is a company trying to scare the internet’s residents thinking they’re the residents of Dresden in order to drum up business. There are plenty of scary things, people, and plots online. There are plenty of bad guys. There are plenty of attacks. There will be plenty more. If you’re in the anti-hacker business, business has no signs of slowing down. So if your product is worth a damn, you shouldn’t have to lie to the internet to sell it. Don’t believe the hype.

2014-02-10:

The gardener used a “lawn mower” to “mow” the lawn.

technopanic at moribund organizations like the NYT runs very deep indeed.
2019-06-12:

Yes, the world has changed. But the NYT seems to think that the government should now just force the internet companies to hand over money after their own members spent years twiddling their thumbs and squandering any attempt to build up loyal followings and sustainable business models. It’s not easy to keep a media business sustainable these days, but so much of it has to do with those companies refusing to recognize how the internet was changing the business, and how to take advantage of those changes.

Office 2007 is a Nightmare

Hey, category managers in charge of IT spend. Want to make yourself a friend of the business for life? I’ve got a secret for you: don’t rubberstamp your CIO’s decision to upgrade to Vista or Office 2007. In fact, tack on a big “reject” to the request or the requisition. And don’t do it to save money. Do it to save your hide.

the comments seem to house a fair amount of microsoft astroturfers

Will Edelman Walk the Talk?

edelman caught in more astroturfing

“as a promotional tactic engineered by Working Families for Wal-Mart, an organization launched by Edelman. WFWM paid for the RV and all travel expenses, rerouted the trip’s original plan, and plastered a logo on the RV’s side. Although the blog featured a link to WFWM, it did not identify the organization as a paid sponsor.”