Ah, the smell of astroturf...
Over two years ago, on August 5, 2006 I posted a couple scans of an advertising come on as well as a transcript of the text. That post shows up on web searches and has received a few comments from other folks curious about who was behind the card. One or two claim to have been salesm...er, Marketing Directors, for the company. Of course there have been the occasional defenders of the company as well. No big deal.
But in last few weeks this post has gotten more replies than usual. One joker made the mistake of posting how he worked for the company in one post, and then a bit later posting how he was a customer of the wonderful place - from the same IP. Since I pointed that out the IP addresses are no longer even similar. But the recent spate of anonymous defenders urging me to "do something beneficial" and seems more than mere coincidence. ("Once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, three times is a trend.") It smells of astroturfing to me. Considering the nature of the "advertising" that prompted the original post, I am not at all surprised. Well, I sort of am. All this attention given to a 2+ year old post? Is my little post that big a deal for them? Wow. How delicate and desperate is their situation if that old post is a somehow a threat?