By: Chuck Miller
Writing

Lauren Boebert uses sockpuppet burner Twitter accounts.

I have to tell this story before I tell the one referenced in today’s headline.

Back in 2008 or so, I used to reside on a sports message board known as Our Sports Central. It was a site for minor league sports aficionados, and I hung out in the minor league basketball portal, where we talked about the state of minor league hoops and the various unsavory characters that tried to operate minor league basketball teams with barely enough financing to purchase a pack of cigarettes.

One such owner, a guy named Marc McClure – he at one time owned a USBL team and later fancied himself as some sort of “ruthless entrepreneur” – yeah, right – would attack various members of the message board, using his name of “Barkley34” and postulating that he was the smartest person in the sports world, and that all of us were just dummies. I called him out on his bullshit, and suddenly another OSC denzien, named “chuck43,” started attacking me. Went straight for the homophobic slurs and the “you never played, so you don’t know shit” argument.

The OSC moderator had had enough, and simply turned on the IP address code, which made all of the posters’ IP addresses visible. And surprisingly (not surprisingly), barkley34 and chuck43 and a few other sockpuppets contained the same exact IP address. Marc McClure’s IP address. And McClure got banned from OSC.

McClure immediately thought I had instigated the comments, and sent me a very angry e-mail. 13 years later, and I still have it in my archives.

“Chucky:   Since people get banned on OSC if they give you shit because you such a pussy and you run to Fells and Paul like some wimpy faggot, I might as well use Yahoo.   Dude, bottom line, REALLY take a look at your website and tell me it is impressive??? SECONDLY, looking like a the 4 eyed dweeb that you are, why would you put a picture of yourself on your site? THIRD, the fact you have time time to troll the OSC is because you probably haven’t go a significant other or been laid in 20 years. Your the type of guy we made fun of in school, picked and never played sports. Probably BLEW the trombone.   In closing, get a REAL website and if you want to be considered a “creative writer”, actually write and brag about something besides some redneck truck jingles. Seriously. Your NOT that good. Mark McClure www.markmcclurelive.com“

*You’re. Lots of *you’re.

Not two minutes later, I received a second e-mail, from what appeared to be McClure’s main account.

It has come to my attention that an email was sent to you using MY name on Yahoo with a link to MY website (not sure waht was written). Not sure who is using my name on Yahoo and for what purpose, but I did NOT send you an email and am reporting this to Yahoo. Sorry about that. Someone has a beef with me for someone reason.   Regards,   Mark McClure

Yeah, right. Sure. And the sun rises in the west. Trust me, I didn’t save these e-mails in a special folder for 13 years just because I’m a pack rat.

McClure tried to go back on OSC several times, using different avatars and identifiers, but his sockpuppet game was uncovered, and he eventually went away. One less troll in the world.

I tell this story because this was one of my earliest experiences with online sockpuppets. Sockpuppets, if you haven’t grasped the internet parlance, is when a person creates a separate online presence, either to support themselves or to feign disgust and stir up controversy. Sockpuppets are childish and, when they’re traced back to the original person, make that original person seem even more petty and childish than previously implied.

Let us now bring you to Lauren Boebert (Rep-Q-Col.).

Boebert ran on a platform of “working mom who owned a restaurant and lots of guns,” and somehow got elected to the House of Representatives. She tries to portray herself as a “hell no you’re not taking our guns” person, even operating her restaurant “Shooter’s Grill” in (I can’t make this up) Rifle, Colorado.

And she’s been pretty vocal online about her unwavering disgust for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You know, the “big bads” for any Republican QAnon conspiracy theorist.

Someone who thinks that Lauren Boebert is a complete kook created a parody website to expose as much about Boebert’s activities as possible. You know, that her restaurant violated health codes, that her husband was arrested for public indecency, the various tweets Boebert made during the January 6th insurrection, all of that.

Last Thursday, the parody website owner happened to be filming from a restaurant across the street from Boebert’s eatery, when this confrontation occurred. Yep, that’s Boebert, and notice the way she’s holding her cell phone to video the confrontation. This will be important.

Not a day later, an account known as “freedom fighter” (@freedom53597835) posted this response.

Hmm… vertical video not properly calibrated, while party is holding phone horizontally? Same words and language about an Officer Gonzales being on the way? If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, someone just AFLAC’d up.

Because Lauren Boebert posted this image from July 8 on her official Twitter account…

And this response popped up. Hmm…

So now since this is a connection between Lauren Boebert and “freedom fighter,” people did some more detective work, and discovered … hoo boy, Boebert’s sockpuppet account defends Boebert on many different occasions. Almost instantaneously, mind you.

So if we’ve established that Lauren Boebert and “freedom fighter” are the same person, now we can dive into “freedom fighter’s” wealth of tweets and see what we can see.

Apparently this burner account started operating when Shooter’s Grill ignored Colorado’s mask mandates and people noticed this. Take a look.

And even today, when Boebert’s sockpuppetry was exposed, “freedom fighter” posted this sockpuppet tweet to claim that the sockpuppet wasn’t a sockpuppet.

Nice try. You got caught. Shame on you. That’s as bad as the old “someone hacked my e-mail and sent out a donation to Black Lives Matter in my name, I want my money back now!” trick.

Trust me, this sockpuppetry and burner account usage is as old as reused underwear. And it also stinks.

Now do what all sockpuppets should do when they get exposed.

Go away.