This is pretty sad

I was looking up sock puppets(don't ask) and came across this.

https://nosockpuppets.wordpress.com/

I just thought it was pretty darn pathetic that some writers stoop so low. Is it that they need the money (these are paid professional writers), or do they need adulation that badly?

Wow, I've suspected that before, but didn't know it had a name. I like the comment by kellistanley... "Our fiction should and must be limited to our novels and stories." Amen!

Using an alias name to promote your story and to blast a good review is shameless!


(sock puppets, BeeJay?)

Sad, but not surprising.

How pathetic! But it is a good reminder to us all that our comments matter more than we realize.

Oh!  Just catching up with this now.  I'd skipped this thread before because I thought it referred to creating puppets from socks--the original meaning of sock puppets--and didn't know there was a whole other meaning to the term.

Creating and using false identities on the Internet is a huge problem.  Amazon has repeatedly encountered the problem of fake reviews of products available there.  Just recently, TripAdvisor implemented a program to verify the reviews of some people who post (those with certain credit cards or members of affiliate programs) in an attempt to weed out imposters.  They will insert some sort of badge or logo that says the review has been posted by a real person, with the idea that if readers know the poster has been vetted, the review can be trusted.

I agree that this kind of sockpuppetry needs to be stopped.  Creating a pseudonym is one thing--one alternate identity for publishing purposes or to protect one's privacy is perfectly acceptable.  But when a person goes on to create multiple identities and uses those additional personas to either support or attack legitimate writers' (or others') work, that's just sad.  If such people are so insecure about their work, then just stop writing.  If they're doing it because they think it will generate more money for them, well, that seems to frequently backfire.  When these sockpuppeteers are exposed, and it seems they usually are because it's not that difficult nowadays to ferret out information on the internet, what they've done backfires and the general public then has a lower opinion of the person and his/her work than might otherwise be if s/he had left things alone.

Just one more piece of evidence that people think they can get away with a lot of stuff on the internet that they wouldn't/couldn't do face-to-face.

Here's a recent article in The New York Times about fake reviews:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/technology/give-yourself-4-stars-online-it-might-cost-you.html?_r=0

Thanks for sharing this article. Very informative!

For anyone who has an Angie's list (not sure if its regional or national) a group that is comprised of basically trade workers, supposedly helping people find workers - they have been slammed for false reviews. Here so many people hired people to do work in their house because of the outstanding review only to find out that the worker themselves and family members have all posted rave reviews. So once again, word of mouth from people you know is probably the best way to find someone, some place, something to read...just about anything.