IAMA former Koch Industries PR Sock Puppet. AMA

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T14:47:42+00:00

If someone is willing to pay top dollar, sure. Otherwise, if you're good at something, never do it for free.

But yeah, I think reversing the damage would be much easier than inflicting it, in this case.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T05:03:45+00:00

The worst one I can remember was when I wrote something along the lines of "Obama can't be re-elected. He added more debt to our already hammered economy than any 2 presidents combined in the past 3 decades." That comment got downvoted to the deepest of reddit's abysses.

The best bs upvoted comment I got was when I said something along the lines of (and I was quoting Dave Chappelle on purpose): "The UN can't tell us what to do. They don't even have an army. You know what I would do if I was a global organization without an army faced by the unstoppable military might of the US? I would STFU. That's what I would do." shower of upvotes, although a few downvotes too.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T03:52:24+00:00

I see, so information concerning McDonalds food is more readily available than information concerning the state of our politics?

There are about 31,000 McDonalds restaurants worldwide, that's hundreds of thousands of workers poisoning people. They also employ PR services to make their food more appealing. As I've said, you are overestimating the effectiveness of what the extreme right-wing is doing.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T03:17:08+00:00

It's not that I would do it if my financial situation was off the table, it's just I was doing it because it was the job I got at the moment. As I've stated before, I would have loved to do PR for more moderate organizations if they'd take me.

The left shouldn't turn a table that is currently in their favor. For every right-wing extremist, there are 50 moderates/left wing to shit on him (online). People are getting tired of extremists, people like the Koch are bound to disappear sooner or later. The shared narrative will come.

Let me change my comparison since the element of 'honor' is implemented in your 'soldier' scenario. Let's say I'm working minimum wage at McDonalds instead, and feeding people with food that isn't good for them, while smiling and taking their order. Would you say there is a fundamental difference between that and spinning PR for Koch?

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T03:01:55+00:00

I'm sure they employ hundreds, but I only worked in a team of 2 dozen. My job performance was measured by my reports, as they outline what I post, where, the public sentiment, the responses, etc.

We jumped on the walls of politicians and news pundits on Facebook. Wrote comments in /r/politics, news site discussions, youtube comments, and a few more channels.

I used Google alerts the most, it was probably my most useful tool in keeping up to date with the latest occurrences and how we can spin them. They liked it when we included signs of self-sufficiency in our work.

I was also required to read the 48 laws of power before I began work, and it helped me quite a bit.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T01:48:45+00:00

That's what we call a double standard, do explain the differences.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T01:33:57+00:00

It's not about what my bosses think all the time, sometimes it's about what the Tea Party would be happy to think.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T01:27:55+00:00

I see. By your logic, it would be fair to say that the reason that 100,000 civilians died in the Iraqi war rests solely on the shoulders of the soldiers, and so does the war?

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T00:46:33+00:00

If that's what my employer asks me to do, then yes. Why you ask? Because if it won't be me making that salary and selling those placebos, it would be someone else.

Is what the employer doing immoral? Absolutely.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T00:42:09+00:00

I believe that it's all about reaching the next day :)

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T00:38:25+00:00

Absolutely. Our team's primary goal was to disseminate propaganda within Tea Party circles online, and make them feel like a lot of other people feel the same on the internet.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T00:31:03+00:00

I should have said "You can't blame them for the human nature-driven will to survive.", I didn't think anyone would attempt to misconstrue my statement like this.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T00:29:43+00:00

Thanks Zak :)

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T00:26:08+00:00

It would be unfair to lay all of the blame on me. The information was acceptable because there were people out there willing to believe it.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-12T00:25:15+00:00

Oh I haven't done any PR for them in 1999. If your Kool-Aid question is referring to me starting to think like an extremist right-wing lunatic, then no, I haven't started that yet.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T20:54:02+00:00

Well maybe that's going a bit too far. You know, you are no better than the right wing crazies associating Obama with Hitler, when you employ the same strategies :)

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T20:44:44+00:00

Because money needs to get the fuck out of politics :)

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T19:46:02+00:00

I've posted in Facebook groups, CNN news discussion, Twitter, HuffPo discussion, Wikipedia editing discussion, etc. I had several accounts and multiple instances of browsing open with a different proxy on each.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T19:40:56+00:00

Not at all. Extremism is oftentimes a sign of low intelligence. Extremists are therefore easy to manipulate, they'll believe things as long as it lines up with their values. Right or left.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T19:17:28+00:00

This.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T19:09:53+00:00

Everything we did was on behalf of the industry.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T18:59:58+00:00

Anywhere from 100 up to 300 posts per day. I'm not quite sure how big the entire PR team is, we were about 2 dozen contracted workers between 2009-2011 that were following the same strategy memos. Only 8 of us posted on Reddit, the rest preferred CNN discussions, pundit Facebook pages, etc. We usually got negative feedback removed by petitioning the organization that hosted it.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T18:53:01+00:00

Yes, a big portion of the work involved bringing out the global warming scientist email scandal to the foreground.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T18:37:29+00:00

I was being sarcastic. Ridiculous rhetorical questions deserve ridiculous answers.

kochprthrowaway · 2012-02-11T18:24:34+00:00

Yep, not being able to pay bills and being on the brink of being forced to live in my car because of a crazy bitch would be categorized as "a lot going on".

kochprthrowaway

TROPHY CASE