The swami makes no accusations and is convinced of nothing. The swami merely observes.
The swami, like others before him, observes that dishonest identity games are seemingly being played on this forum. The swami observes that the persona "Tom Sorensen," ostensibly an Administrator at the obscure and largely inactive JFKBoards.net, seemingly is or was one of the participants in these games. Since being exposed by the swami as an apparent sock puppet of the persona "Martin Weidmann," the "Sorensen" persona has gone poof like others before him.
The swami observes that one Michael Capasse, also an Administrator at the obscure site, and the persona "Martin Weidmann," together with the persona "Tom Sorensen," share a near-identity of views about both the JFKA and U.S. politics, use nearly identical terminology and ad hominem style, and repeatedly congratulate each other on their posts, often with simply an inane
.
The swami observes that "Weidmann" is an obscure name in the U.S. but happens to be one of the leading beer brands of United Dutch Breweries. The swami observes that yet another Administrator at the obscure site, one Arjan Hut, happens to reside in the Netherlands. The swami observes that when the persona "Martin Weidman" recently corrected his time zone, he placed himself in the same time zone as Mr. Hut. Merely observations, not accusations.
The swami observes that when the above observations have been voiced, the persona "Martin Weidmann" rather carefully avoids dealing with them head-on and instead focuses on irrelevancies (GMT+1!) or attempts deflection such as suggesting that the swami is himself somehow a sock puppet of John Mytton.
The swami suspects that he has uncovered merely the tip of a veritable sock puppet iceberg, but he does not know this and makes no accusations. He merely observes.
What is fascinating to the swami is why anyone would play the games that are seemingly being played. The swami discovered that, long before his arrival, Mr. Mytton had referred to the efforts of the "Martin" persona and one of his sock puppets as "tag teaming," which seems as good a description as any - but
why? To what
purpose? Is this driven by some sort of deep insecurity, perhaps?
The swami is disappointed that a forum is allowed to operate in this dishonest manner, but he makes no accusations. He merely observes. If those who are playing the game - and playing it so badly - derive some mysterious satisfaction, perhaps the swami should just observe and be happy for them.
Here is a serious scholarly study of sock puppetry: "An Army of Me: Sock Puppets in Online Discussion Communities,"
https://cs.stanford.edu/~srijan/pubs/sockpuppets-www2017.pdf. The abstract is interesting in relation to what the swami observes here.
ABSTRACT
In online discussion communities, users can interact and share information and opinions on a wide variety of topics. However, some users may create multiple identities, or sockpuppets, and engage in undesired behavior by deceiving others or manipulating discussions. In this work, we study sockpuppetry across nine discussion communities, and show that sockpuppets differ from ordinary users in terms of their posting behavior, linguistic traits, as well as social network structure. Sockpuppets tend to start fewer discussions, write shorter posts, use more personal pronouns such as “I”, and have more clustered ego-networks. Further, pairs of sockpuppets controlled by the same individual are more likely to interact on the same discussion at the same time than pairs of ordinary users. Our analysis suggests a taxonomy of deceptive behavior in discussion communities. Pairs of sockpuppets can vary in their deceptiveness, i.e., whether they pretend to be different users, or their supportiveness, i.e., if they support arguments of other sockpuppets controlled by the same user.
