![]() ![]() Posts from Facebook troll farms were seen by 140 million Americans ahead of the 2020 election, according to an internal document compiled by the social media platform. Their focus, says Stringhini and colleagues’ research, is on fractious social issues: Troll accounts leveraged the divide over Black Lives Matter, and in US presidential elections-arguably being a factor in propelling Donald Trump to victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. ![]() The goal is to make the person behind the accounts seem more realistic, and more human-thus making it easier to seed the more contentious content. Like Bootinbull and JerryRansom, they start with innocuous posts about dogs and animals before pivoting to geopolitics. Instead, Russian trolls build up fake personas online, trying to ingratiate themselves into preexisting Reddit communities, and then move the conversation on to their true aims. Reddit continue to track spam bots and trolls, processing 7.9 million reports of “content manipulation” in the second quarter of 2021. The academics identified the accounts as questionable after tracking the behaviors of 335 users identified by Reddit as trolls back in 2017. The account is one of 1,248 identified by researchers from a consortium of British, American, and European universities as Russian-sponsored trolls, operating on the world wide web. They were a Russian troll account, likely paid by the state to try and upend conventional online discourse and push the country’s talking points to the masses. But Bootinbull wasn’t real-at least not in our traditional understanding. Two weeks later, they were submitting a picture of a dog reclining in a deckchair to r/aww, while also taking part in discussions on the site about the challenge Europe faced with an influx of refugees and Turkey’s geopolitical maneuvering.īootinbull continued adding to Reddit, alternately posting cute pictures of dogs alongside debating China and Russia’s future role in the world. Still, Bootinbull kept going, posting on r/4chan, r/gaming, and r/cats. The post received a grand total of zero comments. ![]() While the question may have been burned into Bootinbull’s mind, it wasn’t something that bothered others on Reddit. At 2.45 am they headed to the r/gaming subreddit and posed a question to the community: Was the Xenosaga series of games influenced by Dan Simmons’ Hyperion cantos? Its messages are aimed towards socially awkward people, or people who are just generally uncomfortable in social situations.Reddit user Bootinbull signed up for their account on October 14, 2015. Socially Awkward Penguin is the polar opposite, with a lighthearted approach and intended toward a more socially accepted audience. These memes differ significantly, with Courage Wolf perhaps the most demented one, as it generally has humor with a morbid audience in mind. Other Advice Animals include Courage Wolf, Actual Advice Mallard, and Socially Awkward Penguin. Phrases such as “Baby won’t stop crying? Put it in the freezer” is common, as an attempt at dark humor. This started with Advice Dog, a meme with the head of a dog on a colorwheel background with generally unhelpful advice meant to make the reader find humor in it. While usually meant for entertainment or humor, some give accurate and helpful advice.Īn entire subgroup of memes entitled Advice Animals serves this exact purpose. Memes are particularly popular on social networking sites such as Reddit, Tumblr and Facebook, as well as specialty sites designed specifically to spread them. Memes are pictures, videos or text that are spread throughout the Internet with slight variations. One of the most popular Internet sensations is memes. ![]()
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