Occupy Wall Street Fail

[thesummerqueen]

A supporter-troll is the one who produced it, but no denouncing came from their website despite the fact that it was spreading around Facebook (and blogs). I saw it a couple times myself on FB but didn't really give a shit enough to pay attention.

Travis' e-mail:

The guy admitted that he photoshopped the image and justified it.

"yes its photoshopped I was hyping the event lol you do know the news is lying to us all day long. So they have CNN and Fox the 99% have me lol"

I replied saying that because they lied, it's okay for you to lie, he said:

"Yes!!

I would do anything to help fight the elites and banksters. I feel overstating the turnout when it is being ignored by the mainstream media might inspire people to head on down.

My take is the world is on its deathbed I would lie cheat, steal and murder to save my daughter a place on this planet these banksters are destroying for imaginary profits.

You can make this an issue but when the food runs out I am eating you."

Tim's response to someone teasing him about the troll:

"You and Travis have been outed as cyberbullies."

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I don't see that we bullied anyone. We exposed a fake photo for what it is, and expressed disappointment that people were reposting it without questioning its credibility, that is all. We didn't threaten, abuse, or profane anybody.

And about banning the dude:

I meant it when I wished him good luck in his protests, as snarky as that comment may have been. If these guys can actually do some good then great. What I have a problem with is when falsified information is propagated as truth with a kind of skepticism, regardless of which side it comes from.

I told him people were of the opinion that the wording at the bottom sounded like blaming, it's up to him if he wants to change it or not. Granted, I see what these guys write in e-mails pretty much every day and they're not the type to blame the whole group.

My personal reason for posting it was because I think it's kinda shitty for something like that to make its way around and a group not say "this ain't us." Not that you can control for all the nutbags on the net, but once it gets fairly up there in the FB/blog scene it's easy enough to post it and say "Not us," especially since it goes against what they're purportedly trying to end. [shrugs]

[Shell B]

My only contention with that is "their" site is not there to talk about what is happening on the internet. If you see it, it is largely user-based photos and news on the protests. Because of the very fact that they are a leaderless group, calling it "shitty" of the group doesn't make sense, in my opinion. Whose responsibility is it to post that? Do we even know that the person updating the site is even aware of it? It's not even an organization. It is simply the news/user page for a protest. There is no spokesperson.

[thesummerqueen]

I said you can't control nutbags on the internet, so I don't know, but the very openness is what made me think it would be easy for anyone who came across it to say so. If there are as many people supporting it or actually out there as are regularly posting on this forum, a good chance is that someone would have come across it, and said "hey, wait a minute" - or maybe that's my wishful thinking - as often as we take turns correcting people here simply about atheism. According to a piece in google news, they've already had to retract several rumors, and they posted the retract about Radiohead, which obviously was more in their face from people showing up expecting to see a concert. And again, that's just my personal opinion thinking its shitty that someone hadn't come forward to counteract that. They don't have to have a set spokesperson whose job it is to seek and destroy for that to happen.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/arti...NNVTHnIHFw

So, since Moros just gave his opinion too, I'm just going to say fine. Point noted.

[Shell B]

I don't mean to upset you. I'm just saying that there is no one person responsible for retracting things. Coming out and saying, "No, this band is not going to be playing at our protest" is a little different from saying, "You know that picture that is on facebook? That wasn't us." The reason I say this is because there is no "us." For all they know, it could have been one of them. No picture is an official picture because there are no officials. It's a protest, not an organization. The picture is stupid. I will grant you that, but it's not "their" stupidity because they are individuals. They are not a "they," in that sense.

[kılıç_mehmet]

Occupying the pavements is not going to archieve anything in the eyes of big corporations. You will still use the same dollars that they put into circulation.

[Autumnlicious]

It just rankles me so,. And I will explain why, in no uncertain terms, that Tim and Travis are fucks that I shan't respect and instead openly revile.

Puppet masters or corporate entities like Freedom Works have dressed up their outreach in conjunction with the Koch brothers to try to persuade the public that the Tea Party is "grass roots". Except that it isn't -- being paid a salary (the upper echelons of the Tea Party) by said companies by definition removes the quality of 'grassroots' from it.

Not to mention, the Tea Party's political leads and member (of congress) acts paint a picture rather different from their public mantra.

So, what we have hear is a lie. And a powerful one at that.

Rather intolerable, don't you think?

Now take a real grassroots organization that is protesting the loss of jobs, house and livelihoods for corruption, greed and so forth. It's not "Godless atheists", "baby killer abortionists" or "pinko democrats" that characterizes the vitriol of Occupy Wall Street (a stark contrast, I might add, to the Tea Party's rhetoric from day one, where they blamed the democrats -- go figure), but simply "corruption, greed and debt."

They're not advocating for the execution of business owners.

They're not advocating for massive class warfare.

They're not placing maps on political websites with cross hairs placed over their opposition's facial shots.

They're protesting not being able to escape massive college debt; enslaved to such debt, one might phrase it as. They're protesting that a CEO of a company makes obscene salaries and then invests in buying up land (thus freezing the value of the money out of the economy), frivolous acquisitions or simply holding on to it. They're protesting that the former sentence has become the rule, not the exception.


So, with all this, we have a movement that embodies something very, very, very needed -- disentangling the influence between Wall Street's private oligarchs and the government.

And then Travis and Tim, while the media is facing considerable criticism for remaining silent on Occupy Wall Street and police brutality is occurring against Occupy Wall Street protesters, think is is oh-so-smart-and-special-of-them to debunk a user generated photo manipulation while simultaneously associating it with Occupy Wall Street (when it is really some no name "protestor").

Furthermore, these "skeptics" can't be arsed to point out that the photomanipulation carries the tag of a graphic designer in mother fucking Vancouver. That single bit of information can take a lazy, piece of shit post on "oh look, its a faaaake" for a viral image and instead turn it into a deep sleuthing post.

However, that did not happen.

And you can see through out the comments section that others raise similar issues. The first commentator notes that it is unjust to hold Occupy Wall Street responsible for some west coast Vancouver-ites made up image.

The response?
"Regardless of the intent, when I saw it this morning it had been shared over 50 times on facebook by, mostly, Occupy Wall Street supporters who took the image as real. I’ve posted it on twitter with the hashtag #occupywallst asking what people thought of it with zero response from anybody on it."

Over 50 times. 50. Not 1,000 reshares. Not a 100. Naw, just "over 50".

That must mean that we can disregard intent, and possibly some more context!

Not impressed.

There's a word for this entire event courtesy of Travis and Tim -- dogpiling.

I don't care much at all for people who dog pile, even to make a few page views.

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By the way, this is a poster used by Occupy Wall Street. Perhaps Tim and Travis can be skeptical of it too?



It used to be that skeptics took up people on what they wrote and said. Sad to see that it's devolved to debunking 4chan quality Photoshops...