Industrial Strength Astroturf

[bellatrys]

via dKossack Morgan Sandlin, an account in Salon by a Dutch reporter in the tradition of Nellie Bly, who went undercover with the McCain campaign and was assigned to write glurgy astroturf fictions to be forwarded around as genuine letters from ordinary Americans that would be sent in to newspapers in order to sway public sentiment by peer pressure

Comments

She was a hardcore fangirl - one of us, too

[bellatrys]

Wangled a "let's capitalize on the popularity of this bestseller by having me recreate it" project out of her editors *and* a chance to visit Verne and squee in person!

[nenya_kanadka]

Does this mean I get to worry less, because fewer people are actually out there composing their own letters to the editor on McCain's behalf (and maybe there aren't as many as I thought)? Or worry more because they've got pros?

It *has* always seemed to me that such letters were always an awful lot alike. Do real people use the buzzwords naturally?? *sigh*

I guess the question is, do they work?

[bellatrys]

It's just another form of advertising, only a dishonest and stealth one. So the worry is over whether or not it *sways* ordinary readers - which I don't know how to measure. But glurge, especially synthesized glurge is tres chic - just look at the success of the Chicken Soup books. So not very helpful, here, I'm afraid, as to whether or not the knowledge of the phenom is relieving or not, except in so far as it helps with the general debunking of their cult of "authenticity" (going along with the guy who made up a fake family that would be hurt by the loss of the Bush tax cuts for rich folks, the use of clipart to provide multiethnic supporters for McCain, etc...)