Wackos to Obliterate: Book Three (Chapter 1)
“Got you, ya motherfucker!” George Kincaid shouted as he typed on a keyboard positioned on a lifting tray that, according to its product description, ‘ensures ergonomic comfort for your arms and shoulders whether sitting or standing.’
“Who did you get?” Mavis asked her husband standing at his desk.
“Another stupid fan.”
“You keep torturing those musicians?”
“Well, they’re set to destroy the moral fabric of this nation,” he muttered.
Mavis sat on the sofa in their fifth-wheel mobile home and watched him. “I don’t think many people believe trolls are protecting them from evil.”
“Maybe not, but that’s what I’m paid to do.”
“God bless America and God bless the Bitmore Group; the moral compass of our nation.”
George looked at her. “Aren’t you the sarcastic one this morning.”
“But don’t you feel a little guilty? Like them or not, but that group is only trying to find their niche in a very competitive marketplace. Hell, it’s not like you never smoked the stuff. I remember when we first started dating, we went over to Tom’s house, I think.”
“That’s right, ‘Atomic’ Tom Day.”
“And we had some hits off of his water pipe.”
“A hookah, my dear, but like that asshole ex-president with the crazy wife: I never inhaled.”
“Well, I did and, you know, I think I’d like to try it again, sometime.”
“If the TRinkets get their way, you’ll be able to buy that stuff in the local convenience store.”
“That’s the group?”
“Yep.”
“You know, I think Erica used to like them when she was in high school.”
“Yeah, they used to be quite popular ten or more years ago, then they broke up due to some scandal surrounding their manager and a drug ring of some sort.”
“You sound like an expert.”
“I do need to do my research …”
“To be an effective troll …”
“Exactly,” he said with a smile on his round, puffy face.
“What do they look like anyway?” she asked as she got up from the sofa and walked the couple steps to his desk.
“Hell if I care.”
“Aren’t you a little curious to look into the faces of your victims?” she asked looking at his monitor. “Why don’t you make a search for a couple of photos?”
“Anything for my little princess,” he said as he typed the group’s name. Within seconds, they were scrolling through pictures of the TRinkets over the years.
Mavis leaned closer to the monitor and pointed at one of the photographs. “Doesn’t that guitar player look familiar?”
“That’s the bass player, darling, but yeah, he does look like somebody.”
“Ryuji!” she shouted. “You know, one of those guys you went duck hunting with in Indiana. He ended up taking some photos for my book’s cover.”
“Just because he’s a Jap doesn’t mean he’s the same guy, but – ah – you’re right, he does look like him.” George made another search and discovered that the bass player’s name was Ryuji. After that, Mavis went to her desk to find the USB thumb drive she was given by Ryuji, which contained a digital copy of his business card in case she ever wanted him to take more photographs in the future.
“You know, you’re trolling the guy who took the photo for my best-selling book. That doesn’t seem right, George.”
Of course, George was not the only one trolling this group; there were dozens scouring SNS, news sites, blogs, fan pages, music sites and video links. Wherever anything about the TRinkets appeared, comments would follow at a fast pace; many of the trolls followed the “triad,” which entailed creating three personas to write supposedly opposing comments with the most logically-sounding one espousing what turned out to be the most effective disseminator of the desired message. George used to be pretty inept at using this technique, but since he bought another laptop, he now had a different machine for each part and each machine was on this standing desk. This made it much easier to get a triad going since he found he had a tendency to write a little differently depending on the machine; making it easier to develop a different persona for each machine. Luckily, this configuration was setup shortly before the call to arms against the marijuana legalization movement and the TRinkets in particular.
For some reason, he found it easy and “fun” to go after this band. He wasn’t sure why, perhaps it was the morally dubious lifestyles the original members had promoted when they had first become popular and then how that had soured through the petty litigation and personal swipes that had gone on for several years between them. Mostly, however, he seemed obsessed with the backstory surrounding Trink, Sophie and Madelyn.
He wasn’t sure what it was about that, though, but something bothered him. Perhaps, it was the interracial elements: Trink being Caucasian; Sophie being African-American; and Madelyn being Asian-American. Maybe, it was that Sophie appeared to be obsessed with Trink, but he snubbed her by developing a long-term relationship with Madelyn, their manager, who just so happened to be a hermaphrodite. Perhaps, it was the rumors of a drug-addled secret brotherhood that may have been connected with the group’s original manager who ended up dying mysteriously, while Madelyn worked as his assistant; shortly after taking over his position and was able to sway the group’s leader Trink Mars to become her lover; thereby, sowing deep rifts between him and the other members of the group.
Maybe, it was the whole rainbow makeup of the group: each having a different ethnic heritage; seeming to blend well together at first; however, breaking up in a very messy way with deep animosity between them. Now, however, the group has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of obscurity to rally behind the legalization movement and appear on the surface to have let bygones be bygones. Something about this smelled; at least, it gave him many angles from which to create some highly inventive trolling.
Working for the Bitmore Group to troll the internet had scratched a creative side of his personality that he had felt was lacking. Before Bitmore, he had more than a bout of envy directed towards his wife’s ability to write romance novels. He found he had resented her ability to tap into her imagination so easily. Now, however, he no longer possessed these negative feelings, but was free to let his own creative juices flow. He loved to imagine a multitude of scenarios surrounding the TRinkets. He could use any of these to compose scathing ramblings in the comment section of websites and SNS feeds. There seemed to be a virtual web of connections he could make.
At times, he felt a little like the Tim Berners-Lee of trolling. Hell, with this group, you could link anything. You could make out any accusation and it would stick; like a Jackson Pollock painting. Perhaps one reason Pollock had become a lasting force in the art scene was that his seemingly randomized dabs of paint created organized patterns from chaos, almost fractal-like, which predicted a system of randomized links on a network like the internet: a web of hyperlinks that take on the shape of the connections in a brain; hell, even the hyperlinking of everything in the universe. The links of his trolling have become a web as well: the microcosm is the macrocosm – when the real becomes the unreal, then the unreal becomes the real. Where had he read that?
Now, however, Mavis had discovered that the bass player of the TRinkets was someone they knew. What effect would this new link have on George doing his job? This was a new dab of paint thrown onto the virtual Jackson Pollock painting he was creating as a troll; his “Convergence” of the TRinkets, marijuana, morality, lifestyle, sociopaths, and the psychopaths that make up the Bitmore Group.
Speaking of the Bitmore Group, what made members of this organization decide to actively pursue disrupting the legalization movement? What made them willing to dedicate sizable resources, but risk negative retribution if their efforts were detected and investigated? In light of leaks by whistleblowers of governmental agencies like the NSA and CIA, heavy-duty monitoring of activity on the internet was being conducted by large teams of people. Why then, risk having illegal activities like trolling, or intentional disruptions and hacking of websites linked to their prestigious organization? Due to the large number of people with rather dubious backgrounds they had contracted to spread their political agenda already, it was highly probable that a whistleblower or two from within their own organization would eventually bring to light their activities without having to be monitored from the outside. If the NSA was not immune to whistleblowing, their much looser organization was obviously open to such publicity. Why take the risk? Regardless, the risk was being taken; therefore, it was obvious that such leaking was anticipated and no doubt encouraged. But why?
Julian Bartel began wondering the same thing shortly after he had been informed of the plan to blitz the legalization movement. Something seems smelly. When one considered the thousands of personnel working for USCYBERCOM - not to mention that tens of thousands at the NSA, CIA, Homeland Security, DoD, and even the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism - any activity done by a political organization like the Bitmore Group must be heavily monitored.
When Julian had started working for Bitmore, he thought they had been able to stay under the radar by using encryption and other security measures, much like members of Wikileaks or Anonymous must have thought, but with more that has been leaked by whistleblowers, it was clear any activity by a large organization like Bitmore would be detected. Therefore, the current campaign to knee-cap the legalization movement was not only encouraged but endorsed by “the powers that be.”
Perhaps, the Bitmore Group was just one of the many components making up the “Digital Outreach Team” to counter misinformation about the federal government in the domestic rather than international cyber battlefield. Such activity shouldn’t be a surprise considering how many resources have been allocated through the decades to fight the “war on drugs.” Perhaps, much of the work Bitmore had done to promote and defend a right-wing agenda actually was just a smokescreen to take the focus off of its “real” mission, which was to be part of a “digital outreach team” based in Washington.
To work as a paid troll is not a crime if it’s for the government, huh? Julian recalled what President Nixon had said several years after he resigned over the Watergate scandal. It must have been during the famous televised interview he had with David Frost. Nixon had said something to the effect that “it was not illegal if done by the president.” So, what we do isn’t illegal, huh? Maybe this insight should be highlighted at the next workshop?
Julian shook his head while stroking his vagina-shaped goatee. “That would result in painting targets on the back of us as collaborators in government propaganda, wouldn’t it?” He looked up from his computer monitor and started to giggle thinking it was funny that he had been catching himself talking out loud more often lately. No doubt, it’s time to get out of this camper and hook up with another breathing body.
Copyright (©) by Kenneth Wayne