Actually, I agree that we're not dealing here (and, I suppose, in those other "Rob Ford supporter infestation" places nfitz is reporting on) with Rob Ford "plants" or "shills" per se--I take archanfel at his word on that count. It doesn't have that Fresh Start-ness about it.
In fact, it's less a matter of plants or shills, than of Rob Ford carpetbaggers. Which is why, once archanfel entered this whole realm of discussion, my little alarm bell rang out--uh-oh, Libertrollian infestation alert.
For you see, it's less about Rob Ford the individual; it's about Rob Ford the symbol. And for the itinerant message-boarding Libertrollian--whatever his personal defects, Ford-the-frontrunner is a symbol of...banzai!!! That in the heart of the supposedly Jane Jacobs-infatuated 416, of all places, this symbol of the philistine-majority-rule Libertrollian wet dream would be way out in front--take that, Libertrollian-haters!
So, to consolidate this new order and leach off the self-evident weakness of the opposition, the Libertrollians infest the message boards.
Trouble is, we've been through all of this before. Libertrollians are the kudzu, the zebra mussels, the emerald ash borer of these here interweb message boards. Remember what prototypally happened to Usenet in the 90s--all the life sucked out until it became a ghetto of Libertrollians and spam.
Funny: Libertrollians claim to represent "the people"; yet their effect is to render message boards et al even more drearily insular and entropic than the way they found them.
They're like a gang of goofs who pride themselves on their supposed sexual prowess and "knowing what girls like"--except that they clear every pickup joint they go to, because the girls "know their number". And they're ever on a futile quest for a fresh pickup joint where the girls don't yet "know their number". I guess the Rob Ford frontrunnerness is the Libertrollian version of some "sure-bet" new formulation of Axe cologne; so, they're out to "give it a try"...
