{"id":591,"date":"2012-09-04T18:40:47","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T23:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/?p=591"},"modified":"2012-09-04T18:40:47","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T23:40:47","slug":"sock-puppetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/?p=591","title":{"rendered":"Sock Puppetry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/sockpuppet.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-592\" title=\"sockpuppet\" src=\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/sockpuppet.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"192\" \/><\/a>Okay, I&#8217;ve always heard that the &#8220;author&#8217;s great mistake&#8221; is responding to critics (or at least attacking them), no matter how horribly misguided they may be, and I always sort of lumped sock puppetry (making up an identity to talk to yourself online) in the same sort of category, when said puppet starts going on about how great you are or attacks the critics in your stead.<\/p>\n<p>Given that once caught, RJ Elroy claimed that &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2197294\/The-author-caught-praising-books-Amazon--writing-disparaging-reviews-rivals-works.html\">everyone does it<\/a>&#8220;, though, we are led to two possible conclusions.\u00a0 One, he&#8217;s right and only a small minority of authors get caught and roundly mocked, or two, he&#8217;s lying or loopy.\u00a0 Boy, I hope it is that second one.\u00a0 At any rate, it almost seems like the worst part of all this is that not only did he go around patting himself on the back, but he made up identities to write bad reviews of other authors (of course, would you want it found out that one of his sock puppets had given you a <em>good<\/em> review?\u00a0 That&#8217;s the sort of thing that could ding up a reputation).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, I&#8217;ve always heard that the &#8220;author&#8217;s great mistake&#8221; is responding to critics (or at least attacking them), no matter how horribly misguided they may be, and I always sort of lumped sock puppetry (making up an identity to talk to yourself online) in the same sort of category, when said puppet starts going on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-writing-things"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}