Sock Mobs

An interesting post from Douglas Rushkoff:

There's a relatively new phenomenon occurring online these days - an illusion of populist group hostilitiy I've come to call "Sock Mobs," after the "sock puppets" people use to feign multiple identities in online conversations. It works like this:

An anonymous poster picks a fight with his presumed enemy. Whether or not that enemy responds, a number of other posters appear to chime in - agreeing to whatever the accusation might be. "This guy is a commie." "This doctor is a quack." "This guy wants Israel to be abolished." "This professor is corrupting college students." The accusation comes along with twisted supporting evidence. Every once in a while, an underinformed but real person agrees with the accusations; after all, it appears from the posts that this enemy of all things good and proper really might be a threat. All this makes it look like there's a lot of upset people.

(Via Smart Mobs.)