OK, now that that little bit of performance art with Strumpette is over, I’m left fascinated by the psychology of the troll.
Clearly, Amanda is the figment of someone’s wet dream. Even I, high priest of transparency, couldn’t see anyone writing a bio like this. Yes, it’s a shame those “perfect perky boobs” aren’t real. Amanda has no visible Google tracks prior to this blog; a person without Googlelife is our modern equivalent of a vampire with no image in a mirror. Many others have tried to track down Amanda. They point their accusing fingers at Brian Connolly, who shares trollish tendencies and IP addresses — and an unusual interest in a certain PR company — but who denies it. I don’t much care.
What interests me is why someone goes to all this trouble to troll. What’s the agenda? Who’s the real target? If this were terribly sophisticated it could be an effort to spoof and ridicule bloggers or PR people. Naw. It could, indeed, be performance art or a book proposal: How I fooled those damned bloggers. It could be someone who hates PR people trying to make them look bad. It could be a case of missing some meds (or secretly longing for a sex-change operation). It could be a vast PR conspiracy to say what PR people have to be too polite to say — after all, Amanda, Chris the alleged intern, and this guy Connolly all hail from Chicago. Coincidence? Yeah. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories; the world’s not that organized. I think this is simpler: Amanda has a hard-on for Edelman. “She” attacked Steve Rubel when he joined them; she went after me only after Richard Edelman defended me against Chris the alleged intern. I have a suspicion that Amanda lost a few clients or a job to Edelman. Who cares?
But this vendetta or spoof, whatever it is, takes a great deal of effort. Amanda’s site is elaborate and she clearly has lots of time or little life and can spend what she has leaving theatrical snark on blogs all over. The troll lives to attack. Like Hezbollah or Al Qaeda, they lurk in the shadows and strike for sport, never building, only destroying. The troll is usually chickenshit, hiding from plain view and open conversation. I don’t get that. I have too much ego not to say what I have to say under my own name.
What amuses me most about this show is that Nick Carr thinks he has found his soulmate: a marriage of trolls. I fear that he’s in for a surprise not unlike those shlubs who think they’re going dating on Dateline. Your dream girl isn’t what you think. She’s all silicone.
: UPDATE: See the comments or this post above: Amanda exposed.
