Interesting. I didn't know the origin of the word.

Whatever it once meant, at present, the term Neo-Con refers to Neo-Libs who have a fetish for aggressive, amoral foreign policy; probably best exemplified by the members of PNAC - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century . These are the folks that said it would take a tragedy the scale of Pearl Harbor in order to shock and awe the public into supporting their legislation.

Agreed that the term should not be applied to social and religious conservatives, but to be clear, Dick Armey's Neo-Con astroturf outfit FreedomWorks© is leading the charge against health care.

>> ^oscarillo:
I find her extremely sexy! (doeas that makes me gay?)


No, unrelated.

She does bring the husk at the end though. Once in one of her videos MONTHS AGO she nonchalently metioned wearing a bikini on her summer break. I'm just not mature enough to avoid dwelling on that just a bit.

This video is missing astroturf.

For those people, like me, who came for the astroturf.. :
http://prmeetsmarketing.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/astroturf.jpg

So the "Union Thug" is a cop, and nobody bothered to get an answer as to why the door was closed. Public rooms have occupancy limits, and it's possible that he was simply enforcing them, as the room already looks packed.

If this was a republican town hall, loyalty pledges would have been required. What a shame that the democrats actually leave themselves open to this sort of astroturfing because they actually think they live in a democracy populate by adults.

I have no problem with people expressing decent, I have no problem with people obstructing ANYTHING happening in public space/buildings.

My problem is that when when people on the right exercise this right they are tolerated, and when people on the left do it they are gassed/sprayed/beaten/arrested. This is not happening in a vacuum, the success of these actions is a testament, not to the popularity of their opinion, but to their privilege.

If they have the right to do this without risk of arrest, then I have the right to blockade an intersection in downtown without the risk of arrest. Blockading discussion in a democracy is a far greater affront to our fellow citizens than making them late for work, it should be treated as such.

The irony if it all, is I'm sure that the initial founders of the conservative movement that sought to exploit religion for their political aims were entirely secular. They must have been, to so ruthlessly use it as cover for the unpopular policies of their corporate benefactors.

Yet somewhere along the line, the very people that engaged in this astroturfing to begin with crafted a narrative to fit around their distorted ideas - that they are the chosen, and duped themselves into believing the very same fiction they were perpetuating.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I tend to agree that we are not the aribiters for these kinds of clips. Although the answer may seem obvious- I can imagine viral marketers using shaky web cam screen caps for guerilla astroturfing of a release. *return

*blog *suspect *video farming *astroturfing

Your video, Maddow Covers FOX's 'Teabaggin' Astroturf Event, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I think this has a lot to do with something imstellar28 posted recently.

People are dumb. Case one - the guy with the blatantly racist and offensive poster. He clearly doesn't even know what "fascism" is, nor can he cite any specific policies or bills our president that support the claims he's making.

Case two (@1:30ish) - if I say what I want to say loud enough, it'll be true, no matter how outlandish the claim, or even if I'm not in the right parade - I have a baby, so it doesn't really matter.

These people have just plain no clue. They live on little blurbs they can memorize easily, because they clearly have a shaky grasp of spoken English, let alone written language.

This is little more than a blatant attempt by Fox News and the Neocons to try and shake a wasp nest while pretending to be journalists covering the bee stings. This is something they blatantly ripped off from the Republican/Libertarian movement that backed Ron Paul for President.

And the idiots don't even realize how plastic they are. "Astroturf" doesn't even begin to describe this fake, aimless movement.

1. My mom and dad met at a Denny's, he was a fry cook and she was a waitress.

2. I have a deep love for diners.

3. My military records show me as 5'10" 98lbs when I entered boot camp.

4. My first dog was named Breezer because of his long hair in the breeze.

5. I once saw the northern lights from a helicopter off the coast of Norway.

6. My youngest brother's favorite memory of me is when I beat up a bully for him at an HS football game.

7. My favorite memory of my younger brother is when he confronted a guy in a bar who wanted to hit me and poked him in the chest until he left.

8. My first car was a Rover 2000.

9. I lived on the streets in Orange County CA for 3 years.

10. I bought a bike while in Shanghai China, rode it for a week then gave it to a poor bicycle repairman.

11. My worst job ever was cleaning the bottoms of boats.

12. I bought a hooker in Den Helder Netherlands when I was 19.

13. I once dated the daughter of the guy who invented Astroturf.

14. I'm not a huge music fan and despise people who can't function without it.

15. I've been to the desert and feel that the silence has changed me.

16. I had a professor once call me a melodrama junkie.

17. I am the only member of my family that likes both lima beans and liver.

18. My dad died as a hermit living in a tool shed in Alabama.

19. I've been truly in love twice.

20. I once shared a beer with Kathy Valentine of the Go Go's.

21. My sister blames me for 2 of my 4 nephews being atheists.

22. I had a military trainer once tell me I had great flexibility and no balance.

Hey,HEY,HEY! Whoa there dystopianfuturetoday!!!!

You are waaay off base.

We have absolutely no way of know whether Lincoln would have fallen off of a Segway!

But seriously. Here begins the official post-term glorification, in all its astroturfing glory, of the disaster of the Bush presidency. What a fucking joke.

WTF? Is this just shown to to legislators and COngressmen?

How can AT&T put out this astroturf crap and pretend their understanding of the internet is as simple as "clogged tubes".

*viral (This is astroturfing for some CBS show!!)

I'm torn on this one. On the one hand this probably isn't a self-link. On the other, the username and clear intent of this person is viral marketing.

[[REDACTED AT REQUEST OF ONLINE VIRAL MARKETING GUY]]]

(haha, joedirt...)

agree completely about waiting awhile before coming back to this.

want to remind everyone that the sense of self-linking that's being discussed here is *not* clearly spelled out in the videosift user guidelines, as phoenix noted. it was only codified in krupo's sift talk post (in august?), at which time several longtime VS members were surprised to find that such a thing was out of bounds here. the context for that post was the strenuous efforts being made by krupo, joedirt, and a few others to police the new member submission queue (now gone).

despite all the talk in this thread and others about the dangers of spam and astroturfing, i don't know of a single attempt here that's been successful. no doubt this is due to the vigilance and excellent detective work of many of the most-active VS members.

there is no reasonable sense in which this type of self-linking (call it krupo #1) is self-promotion, as most people understand it. it does however break the rules of sifting. we're free to change those rules, if we want.

in this case, there are a number of good reasons for considering this, not least of which is that the current policy is *completely unenforceable*. we posted this video last night from a 4-day old youtube user account. we've seen this video before on youtube, but it got taken down (copyright, probably). we have a copy of the .flv file for "tango" from that earlier posting. so is that youtube user account legitimate, or is it a dummy account we set up? it's only been active 4 days, with 18 videos watched, and 8 videos posted.

it so happens that it is legitimate, but i don't think i could prove it to anyone, let alone a user account on some other video hosting site that includes less information about the uploader. unless you're going to move all sorts of posts into that new self-link queue (siftbot command: *self), it will remain entirely up to users who know their way around here to voluntarily comply, like mlx did, like we did.

since the rules in this case have to be followed voluntarily (whatever they are), we're in a position of having to trust each other. personally, i don't think the kind of rule-breaking we're talking about here is that serious a betrayal of trust (because, again, it has nothing to do with self-promotion). i don't want to see anyone banned over it, and i think that threat needs to be taken off the table upfront to make it easier to come to an agreement about what the rules should be.

it's not elitism -- it's friendship, or community at least. we all have reputations here: every comment, vote, submission, and discard is recorded and available to anyone to review. so it's easy to be authentic, because we all know each other (at least in this context) well enough to know more or less what to expect. it's not elitism when you post something that you know a couple of specific users will like, and they do like it and upvote within the first couple hours -- it's just a good community.

like any community, it can be a bit challenging for newcomers to fit in here, at least until they've established a good reputation. overall, we're pretty friendly (i think), and there's a nice pattern of newcomers who do great here right from the beginning. it all depends on how they fit into the mix -- just like anything in life.

the main problem with astroturfing and spam is that it's an abuse of trust. but that's not a major concern when you're dealing with people you know, because there's no way someone with a good reputation with you is going to ruin it for so little benefit. the trouble with treating what theo47 did as if he's an astroturfer is that it ignores his well-earned and longstanding reputation here (likes: atheism, politics -- dislikes: family guy). that's what's absurd about it -- no one's actually worried that theo47's a spammer, we know the guy.

again, the best argument against this kind of self-linking has nothing to do with astroturfing. it's that sifting is a game we're all playing by the same rules. you don't let your friend cheat in scrabble, but there's no suspicion of hidden motives -- just the rules of the game.

again, if the ideal behind the rule is to ban self-promotion of any kind, there are many other common practices here that will have to be reviewed. submitting your friend's self-made video; saving or promoting your friend's post (especially at their request); even a pattern of consistent quid-pro-quo voting would all be targets of suspicion. yes, in all these cases it's friends helping friends, but on the public face of it (how many people a day come to videosift's main page, tens of thousands?), we're all raising our profiles.

but that would be silly and absurd. because we'd be treating each other with a kind of distrust and disrespect that's just unnecessary among people who know, like, and trust each other.