Is Countertrolling a Troll The Answer

[hotdogPi]

Even if he held a grudge, he probably isn't that savy socially to not make it obvious who he is on another sock puppet attempt.

I was explicitly looking for signs early on, including checking the member statistics pages, and concluded they were different. It was only one specific thing much later on plus communicating with the admins that was a "smoking gun" as Scott5114 put it.

[jeffandnicole]

I don't even remember MMM's two prior accounts. I guess he got his permanent infamy on his third try.

Now let's just hope he doesn't hold a grudge. He seems to be the type to doxx people and start sending Zodiac killer style letters to our homes but instead of symbols they're just prime numbers.

Whose house numbers and zip codes are prime numbers, and live on curvy roads with high speed limits he can't handle?

[SectorZ]

Even if he held a grudge, he probably isn't that savy socially to not make it obvious who he is on another sock puppet attempt.

I was explicitly looking for signs early on, including checking the member statistics pages, and concluded they were different. It was only one specific thing much later on plus communicating with the admins that was a "smoking gun" as Scott5114 put it.

Kudos on cracking the code.

I kind of wonder what the point of all the effort into coming back and making a third account is all about. That is several levels of "needing to get a life" beyond what I can wrap my head around.

[SectorZ]

I don't even remember MMM's two prior accounts. I guess he got his permanent infamy on his third try.

Now let's just hope he doesn't hold a grudge. He seems to be the type to doxx people and start sending Zodiac killer style letters to our homes but instead of symbols they're just prime numbers.

Whose house numbers and zip codes are prime numbers, and live on curvy roads with high speed limits he can't handle?

Thankfully my address and zip are even numbers and my dead-end road is dead straight its entire length. 

[webny99]

Well, I missed out on an interesting plot twist! I don't remember Mike2357, probably due to the generic nature of that username, but I do remember SafeSpeeder - which is certainly a logical connection to MMM given the content of his early posts here. There is definitely some connective tissue in terms of his location and the issues he posted about, too.

I wonder if it would be possible for a sockpuppet to clean up and get respected enough so that getting caught wouldn't get them banned. I'm honestly not sure.

Oh, I have zero doubt the answer is Yes, for a few reasons:

1) I had two accounts myself at one time. That could have been grounds for serious trouble, but fortunately, I had enough sense to be agreeable when people starting connecting the dots, so I essentially self-reported the duplicate account, the admin team merged the two accounts without issuing any discipline, and I've been posting from this account ever since.

2) MMM lasted for almost six months. That's a long time. We were generally annoyed by him, but he created some legitimate content and garnered a bit of respect. There was even some discussion of whether or not he was a troll, it wasn't just assumed that he was. He even told us quite a bit about himself, which isn't typical of a troll, and could very easily be why he ended up getting caught.

We've had people do it on the same account before. If you looked at some people's posts from 2010 you'd never guess they're the same person.

And this leads me to 3) which is that, depending on MMM's actual age, it's quite possible that he had actually matured since creating his previous accounts.

[webny99]

I don't even remember MMM's two prior accounts. I guess he got his permanent infamy on his third try.

"Permanent" in the sense that none of us will forget who he is now. But I wouldn't be surprised in the least if he makes another comeback - possibly even another one where he posts for several months before anyone figures out he's a known troublemaker.

[jmacswimmer]

It just occurred to me that 2, 3, 5 & 7 are all prime numbers...another clue in hindsight

[JoePCool14]

I think for the future, we might want to consider having a better procedure to deal with "disruptive" members of the community. This might be a good use for a hidden meta board, restricted to members of the forum for over a certain period of time (a year? two years? more? or simply more of a "trusted" status in the community?) where we could discuss potentially problematic people.

And I'm not asking for it to be a "gossip" board. It would be specifically for cases like this, where we could have some sort of "community consensus", not for nitpicking every new member to the community as this would just be unnecessarily hostile.

Does anyone think this might be a good idea?

[hotdogPi]

I think for the future, we might want to consider having a better procedure to deal with "disruptive" members of the community. This might be a good use for a hidden meta board, restricted to members of the forum for over a certain period of time (a year? two years? more? or simply more of a "trusted" status in the community?) where we could discuss potentially problematic people.

And I'm not asking for it to be a "gossip" board. It would be specifically for cases like this, where we could have some sort of "community consensus", not for nitpicking every new member to the community as this would just be unnecessarily hostile.

Does anyone think this might be a good idea?

This could easily have revealed the "smoking gun" earlier, although not guaranteed. If such a board existed, I would explain exactly how I figured it out in that board; I don't want to say it here because MMM could use it to his advantage in his fourth account.

[1995hoo]

For those who don't remember, Mike2357's perhaps most notorious thread is still active. He initially called it "Retard Routes," and that title unsurprisingly got some pushback and caused the mods to lock the thread until he requested that they change it to "Weird Routes."

[J N Winkler]

I wonder if it would be possible for a sockpuppet to clean up and get respected enough so that getting caught wouldn't get them banned. I'm honestly not sure.

As Webny99 noted upthread, there have been instances of people self-reporting second accounts and simply having their posts merged with the main account without penalty.  The usual scenario is the second account going inactive due to loss of the password.

I am not aware of any instances on this forum of previously banned users being allowed to remain once they have been found to have rejoined under a sockpuppet account.  However, in the past I had moderator responsibilities on another road-related forum where there was at least one instance of a banned user being allowed to remain for a time under a new account.  That forum bans members by majority vote and he ended up losing at least two (maybe three) ban votes.

While it is certainly possible for most people--even many "problem" users--to learn different styles for communicating on a Web forum and thereby engage with the community in a more constructive way, permanent bans are strong medicine and tend not to be given unless the user comes to be seen as incorrigible.

[hotdogPi]

I have received an email from him. Key points:

• He knows that the email address is what did him in, and he was surprised it wasn't caught earlier. At the time he posted his email in that fictional highway tab, he didn't care whether he got banned or not.
• He does not intend on creating a fourth account, although he doesn't realize MMM was his third and not his second. He had mental health issues at the time of his first account, and he implies that he doesn't anymore, but I'm not entirely sure that's true.
• Most of the topics were trolling, but the child abuse discussion was serious. No determination one way or the other on his sex life.

[1995hoo]

I can't tell if MMM was banned or if the admins just reset his post count to zero.

A smoking gun has been shared with us that MMM is a sockpuppet of Mike2357. He has therefore been permanently banned.

No idea who Mike2357 is. But thanks for the update. 

Edit: Ok, I see now. I can also why I didn't really know about his previous account. He only posted with it for about one week in 2021.

SafeSpeeder was another of Mike's aliases. I'm a little surprised that MMM is one as well, honestly!

There has been chatter about MMM being a sockpuppet for about a month.  A lot of people seem to have thought he was a Marf sock.  Then again, at this point I suspect that all of these are the same person.  Oh well, I guess he turned out to be that George Santos analog after all.

The various Marf sockpuppets–or, as someone memorably put it, "the Marves"–were often easy to identify because the thing they all had in common was a rather severe grudge against webny99 (I was never clear on the history behind that). It was often extremely obvious and vitriolic stuff. MMM, Mike2357, etc. never went down that path as far as I can recall.

[Roadgeekteen]

I have received an email from him. Key points:

• He knows that the email address is what did him in, and he was surprised it wasn't caught earlier. At the time he posted his email in that fictional highway tab, he didn't care whether he got banned or not.
• He does not intend on creating a fourth account, although he doesn't realize MMM was his third and not his second. He had mental health issues at the time of his first account, and he implies that he doesn't anymore, but I'm not entirely sure that's true.
• Most of the topics were trolling, but the child abuse discussion was serious. No determination one way or the other on his sex life.

I don't trust him. He's creating a 4th account. He literally revealed that he was a troll, or at least heavily hinted at it.

[Molandfreak]

• He does not intend on creating a fourth account, although he doesn't realize MMM was his third and not his second. He had mental health issues at the time of his first account, and he implies that he doesn't anymore, but I'm not entirely sure that's true.

[webny99]

To tie together two different threads of discussion here: I would support this thread and possibly the entire "Suggestions and Questions" board being switched to a user-only board.

It strikes me as unhelpful to all parties involved to give non-users, possibly including MMM and/or other banned users, the ability to read threads like this one. I suspect that knowing you're being talked about would tend to encourage you to try to come back. Also, if potential users/lurkers encounter this thread in casual browsing, they could be turned off by it.

[J N Winkler]

I don't trust him. He's creating a 4th account. He literally revealed that he was a troll, or at least heavily hinted at it.

Recidivism is nearly 100% with the kinds of trolls that earn themselves permanent bans.  But experience does suggest it could take quite a while for him to turn his attention back to us.  Mike2357 surfaced in August 2021, and then SafeSpeeder showed up that September, but it took until November 2022 for MMM.

[hotdogPi]

To tie together two different threads of discussion here: I would support this thread and possibly the entire "Suggestions and Questions" board being switched to a user-only board.

It strikes me as unhelpful to all parties involved to give non-users, possibly including MMM and/or other banned users, the ability to read threads like this one. I suspect that knowing you're being talked about would tend to encourage you to try to come back. Also, if potential users encounter it in casual browsing, they could be turned off by it.

MMM explicitly said in his email to me that I can post what he said in his email here.

EDIT: He barely even remembers his first two accounts. He recognizes the username of the first one but doesn't really remember what he did there. The second has pretty much entirely vanished from his memory.

[webny99]

^ Well, that certainly confirms my point, as I was fairly certain that he would be watching this thread.

Are there any drawbacks to making "Suggestions and Questions" a user-only board?

[Roadgeekteen]

^ Well, that certainly confirms my point, as I was fairly certain that he would be watching this thread.

Are there any drawbacks to making "Suggestions and Questions" a user-only board?

My guess is that mods want guests to be able to learn about how we operate before they join, but a mod can confirm.

[webny99]

The various Marf sockpuppets–or, as someone memorably put it, "the Marves"–were often easy to identify because the thing they all had in common was a rather severe grudge against webny99 (I was never clear on the history behind that). It was often extremely obvious and vitriolic stuff. MMM, Mike2357, etc. never went down that path as far as I can recall.

This is quite the rabbit hole, but I believe the origin of Marf's apparent hate for me was my disrespect for the ideas he posted in the Fictional board, including this thread, but especially a series he created called "Maine Highway Fridays" (see here and here; note SectorZ with an all-timer in the second one )).

I thought the whole concept was quite hilarious, and made some sort of disparaging remark about it in another thread, which he took serious offense to. Then a few weeks later, when I expressed support for someone else's fictional proposal, he attacked me for it, leading to a warning, and the rest is history.

[SectorZ]

The various Marf sockpuppets–or, as someone memorably put it, "the Marves"–were often easy to identify because the thing they all had in common was a rather severe grudge against webny99 (I was never clear on the history behind that). It was often extremely obvious and vitriolic stuff. MMM, Mike2357, etc. never went down that path as far as I can recall.

This is quite the rabbit hole, but I believe the origin of Marf's apparent hate for me was my disrespect for the ideas he posted in the Fictional board, including this thread, but especially a series he created called "Maine Highway Fridays" (see here and here; note SectorZ with an all-timer in the second one )).

I thought the whole concept of was quite hilarious, and made some sort of disparaging remark about it in another thread, which he took serious offense to. Then a few weeks later, when I expressed support for someone else's fictional proposal, he attacked me for it, leading to a warning, and the rest is history.

Damn that was some peak sarcasm on my part with that one. The fact that he took it seriously was what made it good.

And, wait a minute, Marf made his own map of Los Santos. The running joke here that MMM was George Santos... It's like some X-Files level coincidences now.

[roadman65]

Did I miss something?  I see all of MMM posts have been deleted? Is he no longer a member?

[Max Rockatansky]

Read the last two pages, he was a sock puppet.

[roadman65]

I now see. For another user named Mike.  Interesting. He wouldn't been the first and won't be the last.