That was the Greek Heroic Age of trolling. Nowadays it's practically an industrial process.
I didn't have any idea what this was about, but now I think I do remember Al. Did he comment at saiselgy's blog?
Because of the speed of responses and general predictability, A1 was widely suspected of being on the payroll of the Republican National Committee or some related organization, and probably more than one person. No idea if this is true.
I never quite paid enough attention to him to get a sense, but I thought he'd sounded consistent/human on some non-political topic? Was he a sports fan?
9: Yes, I think he was. Seem to remember that he got in arguments about basketball as well as politics in Saiselgy's comments section.
I remember references to him, and couldn't remember if he'd ever been here, at least under that name. I guess not.
Don't think so. We weren't big enough ever to draw the paid trolls. All of ours were amateurs.
Didn't Al live in Seaside NJ? Yeah, he was either real or had a good legend.
I remember him making a good joke once: "You sank my Rainbow Warrior!" I don't remember the context. He had strong opinions on NBA basketball, IIRC.
It's clear to me what's going on with this post: Al was ogged all along, and he's nostalgic for his paid trolling days.
Now has got to be the golden age of paid trolling. The Russians alone have an army of them.
I guess that was the point of the OP.
Given Al's ubiquitous commenting, I often wondered if it wasn't a collective persona. It never occurred to me he might be paid. I'm not sure it would have been worth anybody's money.
The benefits of any publicity campaign are hard to quantify.
Was in the neighborhood looking up this recipe: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_7972.html#722626
Remembered how entirely lovely you people are, and thought since it's effectively Thanksgiving, I should say thank you.
21: Di! I was thinking fo you the other day.
Aww, thanks Moby, teo and BG! I pop in now and then, though few comments these days.
Happy Thanksgiving di and to all who comment and lurk here!
28: That recipe is quite good. I made a quarter batch, which will likely be more than enough.
Speaking of... what happened to Shearer? I haven't seen him in a while.
31: He was asked to leave after Castock got fed up with his racism and called the rest of us out on it.
33: Does that work for President-elects?
As long as we are talking about the trolls of yesteryear, here is a small disappointment of mine in that regard that happened late one night right here on this very blog.
ToS was in standard form so decided to see how he matched up with one of the greats. So i found some Serdar Argic rants and lightly edited them to attack/respond to ToS (calling him ToSsarian in one instance). Went back and forth about 3 or 4 times and was one of the few times I saw ToS break character. A proud moment. But I forgot to ask to not have anyone delete them, and they got whacked as was the custom at the time.
And then I found $5 in a Wisconsin polling booth.
Happy belated Thanksgiving you reprobates. Hi Di, was recently thinking of you, Rory and even the UNG.