Trolls, Pots And Kettles

November 25, 2012

It’s interesting how much buzz resulted from yesterday’s post about an anonymous Twitter troll, @CoyotesClubber, and how her exhortation to fellow Twitter trolls to write emails to Glendale CM Knaack probably resulted in at least one impersonated email being sent to her. Why the buzz when I’ve detailed some of this before?

This time, somebody called the cops and they’re on the case.

False bravado aside, the Internet trolls involved are no doubt checking their super secret proxy servers and their extra clever disguising of the whereabouts of their Trollhaven looking for possible mistakes. Coincidentally, the police are probably doing the same thing. My money is on the tools available to the cops, especially with the legislation trend allowing them significantly more freedom. All it will take is some resolve on their part to get to the source of the email, if they choose to find it they will. If, for some reason, they decide to simply drop it after satisfying themselves that it wasn’t the person being impersonated, that could be a horse of a different color.

Winnipeg

For some social media history of this fiasco, the trolls began appearing early in the Coyotes saga. The first to show up were Winnipeg people, considering themselves fans of the Coyotes in their earlier guise as the Winnipeg Jets. They have been annoyed since losing their team to Phoenix. The NHL was looking to push into larger markets than Winnipeg and, after having their team for sale for a couple years, the Jets left their aging arena for Phoenix. After Manitoba and Winnipeg kicked in a bunch of dollars to build them two new arenas (MTS Centre and MTS Iceplex for practice) and the city coughed up tax breaks for them, True North began their plan for an NHL team.

The amount of government subsidy given to True North and their requests for even more to help defray relocation costs is conveniently forgotten in Trollsburg where they obsess with the same sort of thing in Glendale. Never mentioned is True north asking for a government handout to pay for the moving vans from Atlanta to Winnipeg. They conveniently ignore the cost of the arenas and the continuing subsidies $6.9M this year climbing to $11M according to Winnipeg Free Press (click here). It’s even MORE ironic that the $11M figure is the arena lease management fee to be paid to Hockey Partners (if it isn’t pro-rated before the contract is signed) by Glendale. If THEIR government is paying for their hockey team, why are they upset if Glendale “subsidizes” the Coyotes? You’d have to ask them.

The excitement ramped up because they saw the Coyotes as a likely relocation target. This would be a good place to state that undoubtedly MOST Jets fans aren’t boorish trolls, it’s a very small subset that is so obsessed with the Coyotes. However, that subset is vociferous and seemingly constantly connected to social media. Unfortunately for the hockey fans in Winnipeg, they ended up with the Atlanta Thrashers instead of the Pacific Division Champion Coyotes, but at least they have an NHL hockey team. Sure, their only citizen of Byfugly has had a few issues with impaired operation of a boat and their star player was recently cut from his lockout post on a KHL team, but at least they have a team.

So, why haven’t they shut up yet? You’d have to ask them.

Quebec City

A new breed of troll appeared shortly after the announcement that the provincial government of Quebec and the city government of Quebec City would each be kicking in $200M for a new arena (total cost $400M for the arithmetically challenged). If you see the pattern of government subsidy of private enterprise, the denial of same, and the criticism of OTHER governments that choose to build arenas you are not alone. The government there even launched a preemptive strike against their citizens with Bill 204, blocking people from suing. Why? They assumed the citizenry would be annoyed that Quebecor would be given control of their $400M arena and might want to stop it. So sorry, people, now you can’t. Why aren’t the trolls upset over their rights being usurped in this fashion? Is that why they are so concerned about the rights of Glendale people?

Us Coyotes fans expected the onslaught and were almost instantly rewarded. Why? Quebec has also failed to support an existing NHL team well enough to keep it from relocating, in their case it was the Nordiques moving to Denver. We knew that the spurned Nordiques fans would also see the Coyotes as likely next tenants of their nonexistent arena and we were correct. While it is often funny to see the trolls translating their broken French (ask a person from France if it’s broken French) into broken English, the intent of many is mean-spirited and insulting. Why? Again, you’d have to ask them.

But I Digress

A typical response to yesterday’s post on Twitter comes from the now familiar @CoyotesClubber:

@NebulousVerb I sent the tweet to cause chaos, but didn’t send that email. Did Homeland Security grab Mike for “hateful bitch”? No? Nice try

She is referring to Mike Phelan (@mcmikex), an obsessed Winnipeg citizen and a frequent visitor to all local Internet sites that mention the Coyotes or Glendale politics. She does admit to wanting to cause chaos, we can imagine the tee hee of delight from her as she typed that. I doubt, though, that she is referring to the potential chaos she has caused in her own life with her thoughtless tweet. You’d have to ask her.

The resulting email in question, at least the only one I’ve seen, is innocuous compared to the filth spewed by the same people at other targets. The worst of it is that she calls CM Knaack a “stupid bitch”, significantly less obtrusive that CM Clark being characterized by similar people as a “hateful bitch”, a “stupid cow” and a “c**t” among MANY other things. When CM Clark responded to these comments by openly blocking all Canadian trolls on Twitter and Facebook, she was greeted with allegations of racism (as if “Canadian” is a race). The complete lack of respect for women and children, typical of male cowards, exhibited by these boors is particularly disturbing to adult humans not absorbed by a demonic obsession with a hockey team.

So why is it only now that Five-O is involved? The police report will, hopefully, be available tomorrow. It should show who filed the report, when it was filed and what the statement was that resulted in the Glendale police deciding to pursue the perceived threat. I don’t believe CM Clark ever filed any sort of report about her adventures in cyberbullying, so maybe it’s as simple as CM Knaack decided to pick up the phone and complain.

Some cynics might believe that the Glendale police were alerted and responded solely to add a little “stank” to the rabid Coyotes fans in the area. We know that CM Knaack was unhappy with a series of email that undoubtedly DID originate from real Arizona residents and, perhaps, our requests to people that WE know to cease sending emails is actually what triggered this attack. We know that these people remain glued to our every word published on the Internet yet we felt it was important to get our message out. I can’t imagine that CM Clark is worthy of less protection from her police force than is CM Knaack. Perhaps the addition of a recall threat leveled against CM Knaack cause the cop visit? Did they also visit the people behind that threatened recall, or was it just the Coyotes fan that was impersonated? You’d have to ask them.

There have been comments and emails from the trollerati. Not one of them remotely accepted any responsibility or was even the least apologetic for the behavior of their cohorts. Most whined about Coyotes fans saying nasty things to them as well. To them I say “Oh yeah well YOU started it!” and stick out my tongue. No retaliation on “our” part would be possible without being attacked first, it’s pretty much the definition of the word. And, I daresay, use a sampling of my tweets and posts and compare them to those “others” to decide who was attacked first and who has gone over “the line”.

I’ll pick up the police report on Tuesday before the city council meeting, we’ll see what it says.

Until then, keep the faith Coyotes brothers and sisters,