Back in the day, I saw a number of online communities be ruined by trolls. People with emotional defects wrecking things for no reason. Engaging with them was frustrating, and caused many valuable people to stop participating. Trolls were easy to spot, not intellectually capable, and the creation of newer moderated communities mostly solved that problem.
Over the course of the past 5-10 years, community ruining toxic trolls have been replaced by community ruining marketers. Engaging with them is similarly frustrating, but they are harder to spot and the good ones are intellectually sophisticated.
Moderation helps, but it does not cure. I wonder if the aggravation caused by marketeers causes people, valuable people like Durante, to pull back and eventually leave like trolls used to do in the past. I read a couple of Durante's posts about how the revealing of the viral marketers had made him angry and uncomfortable, which is a feeling I know. Aggravation and frustration leads to 'why bother' before long.
On the gaming side, I've noticed only two companies that engage in this behaviour in an obvious way: Microsoft and Square. I'm not saying, they are the only companies, just the obvious ones. Windows 8 threads are insufferable, I can't be bothered with those anymore. The Tomb Raider thread was likewise terrible, with Harlequin wrecking conversations.
Oh, and MS is a huge user of Astroturfing, as is Bill Gates personally. Public opinion is just another tool to be used, regardless of any negative collateral damage. Some more random links:
Microsoft and Nokia Caught AstroTurfing, Abusing/Attacking Genuine Posters
1/3 of Onlie Reviews are Fake (ny times)
Astroturfing Antitrust: How Microsoft is Crafting the Grassroots Case Against Google
Microsoft lobbying campaign backfires; even dead people write in support of firm
FUD
If anyone wants me to add some links, I will.
TLDR: Viral markets wreck forums and comments sections. :sadface:
PS Not in anyway gaming related, but this serves as a good example of just what lengths PR firms will go to for their clients:
Over the course of the past 5-10 years, community ruining toxic trolls have been replaced by community ruining marketers. Engaging with them is similarly frustrating, but they are harder to spot and the good ones are intellectually sophisticated.
Moderation helps, but it does not cure. I wonder if the aggravation caused by marketeers causes people, valuable people like Durante, to pull back and eventually leave like trolls used to do in the past. I read a couple of Durante's posts about how the revealing of the viral marketers had made him angry and uncomfortable, which is a feeling I know. Aggravation and frustration leads to 'why bother' before long.
On the gaming side, I've noticed only two companies that engage in this behaviour in an obvious way: Microsoft and Square. I'm not saying, they are the only companies, just the obvious ones. Windows 8 threads are insufferable, I can't be bothered with those anymore. The Tomb Raider thread was likewise terrible, with Harlequin wrecking conversations.
Oh, and MS is a huge user of Astroturfing, as is Bill Gates personally. Public opinion is just another tool to be used, regardless of any negative collateral damage. Some more random links:
Microsoft and Nokia Caught AstroTurfing, Abusing/Attacking Genuine Posters
1/3 of Onlie Reviews are Fake (ny times)
Astroturfing Antitrust: How Microsoft is Crafting the Grassroots Case Against Google
Microsoft lobbying campaign backfires; even dead people write in support of firm
FUD
If anyone wants me to add some links, I will.
TLDR: Viral markets wreck forums and comments sections. :sadface:
PS Not in anyway gaming related, but this serves as a good example of just what lengths PR firms will go to for their clients:
Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies said:On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops led by dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-producing nation of Kuwait...The American public was notoriously reluctant to send its young into foreign battles on behalf of any cause. Selling war in the Middle East to the American people would not be easy.
Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti [Public Relations] campaign...
Hill & Knowlton produced dozens of video news releases...The VNRs were shown by eager TV news directors around the world...TV stations and networks simply fed the carefully-crafted propaganda to unwitting viewers, who assumed they were watching "real" journalism...
Every big media event needs what journalists and flacks alike refer to as "the hook." An ideal hook becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy, evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In the case of the Gulf War, the "hook" was invented by Hill & Knowlton. In style, substance and mode of delivery, it bore an uncanny resemblance to England's World War I hearings that accused German soldiers of killing babies.
[the hook] came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah....Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where ... babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."
If Nayirah's outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated to support military action....On January 12, the US Senate voted by a narrow, five-vote margin to support the Bush administration in a declaration of war. Given the narrowness of the vote, the babies-thrown-from-incubators story may have turned the tide in Bush's favor.
...The pattern underscored what Napoleon meant when he said that it wasn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered.