by Linda Ciardiello
It is only when our appointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception. – Joseph Conrad
The New Kadampa Tradition’s (NKT) misinformed war of hate on the Dalai Lama is being waged increasingly via social media – and often with blatant disregard for ethical and moral principles. Lately they have been boasting success on Twitter in managing to get their hashtag “#DalaiLamaStopLying” high in the charts of worldwide Twitter trends, giving a false semblance that they are garnering wide, grass-roots support for their spurious cause. According to “Atishas Cook”, the latest “Tweetstorm” they orchestrated saw them manage to register 40,000 Tweets in one hour. Without a hint of shame or irony, they state that by these two-hour timeslots of concentrated Twitter blitzing they are, in fact, just “cooking up” a Tweetstorm, blithely ignoring the dishonest implications in the term “cooking up”. For the truth is that these Tweetstorms are faked and their world-wide, high trending rankings are rigged. In this article we will show you how just a few dozen NKT devotees can easily manage to pull off 40,000 Tweets in an hour.
It is both alarming and sad to witness the extent to which compassionate people who were drawn to the NKT with sincere, positive motivation, permit themselves to become increasingly sneaky and deceitful in the name of promulgating the truth and the path to enlightenment for all. Similar to any other religious or political extremist group, for whom the doctrine of the-ends-justify-the-means has become the supreme maxim, all manner of non-virtuous and unethical behaviour is justified by the dangerous and erroneous presumption that all that matters is their intention. The NKT’s use of trickery and deception to pull the wool over benighted eyes in the name of the supposed higher cause of their “virtuous intention” is deplorable because, in practice, it encourages a fundamental disrespect and superior attitude toward those for whom it claims feelings of compassion, and a manipulative, controlling attitude towards those it claims to liberate. Worse still, as they bask in Conrad’s “comfort of complete self-deception”, they fail to understand that far from being protected by their good intentions, they are tragically going astray.
Not only do they show no shame for the dishonesty and trickery they use to get their hashtag trending high in world-wide Twitter charts, such is their total self-deception that they think this dishonest spamming fakery constitutes meritorious action – when the Tweetstorm is over they pat each other on the back, reminding each other: “don’t forget to dedicate your merit”. Indeed, as “Atishas Cook” glories in the success of their giant con- trickhe declares that he is “so proud of my Sangha I could cry.” He is oblivious to the inherent dissonance of a supposed Buddhist taking pride in his Sangha’s skilful scamming and the seeming success of a dedicatedly unethical campaign.
So what is this Tweetdeck that Lyn et al are trying to master? It allows you to schedule Tweets and you can operate more than one Tweetdeck with several accounts. Twitter limit the amount of Tweets you can send from one account to about 300 in one hour, so in order to get round this limit the NKT devotees set up loads of fake accounts and use Tweetdeck to upload all the Tweets at once.
Here’s NKT tweeters Jan and Steven giving some top tips on setting up multiple accounts without being found out, “even if it’s a fourth, fifth, hundredth account”:
Stephen comes up with yet another cunning plan, for setting up false accounts for spamming, one that can’t be easily detected. He advises some NKT tweeters to follow the example of Indyhack, who is “having more success than anyone else because he is seen as an unbiased, independent news source”. The key words here are “seen as”. It may come as a surprise to Stephen, but it’s likely that most people would not consider Indyhack anything of the sort: it is in fact plain as day to even the moderately informed, that he is nothing but a deceptive NKT propagandist, masquerading as an independent journalist.
Indyhack himself inadvertently revealed that he is quite a “Pro” at running these sorts of multiple accounts on Twitter “for hate speech”, without being caught, as hewas giving me “Pro-Tips” on Twitter on how to cover your tracks while you do it:
Such is the skill of this multiple account “Pro” we could justifiably deduce that of his 1700 or so Twitter followers, the majority of them are none other than Indyhack himself, in the guise of hundreds of fake accounts that such a skilful “Pro” as Indyhack could operate standing on his head:
Joel and Kevin, two more dedicated NKT Tweeps, are comparing notes on the amount of Twitter accounts and Tweetdecks they can operate at once:
Let’s do some math here: If Joel does manage to operate 17 accounts with 3 Tweetdecks as he claims he can do, that means he alone could produce 17 x 300 = 5,100 Tweets in 1 hour. When you see the strategies these tech-savvy tweeters deploy it actually starts to make the 40,000 Tweets they manage in one hour look rather paltry!
Another very useful tool they have at their disposal is Hootsuite, where they can bulk upload scores of pre-written Tweets in various languages courtesy of the technical wizardry of NKT devotee Maximo:
Here’s Maximo explaining how to use all the tools he’s providing to “crush” the Dalai Lama on the net to Kelsang Chogma, who’s not been well lately (seems she’s a tad overwhelmed by all the fake accounts she has set up for herself). In parenthesis, he also reveals that it is Diane who is the chief creative genius behind the appearance of all those deceptive, violently disrespectful memes that the NKT love to circulate.
Yet their “success” is not all down to Maximo and his dedicated band of followers, it’s a “group effort” after all:
However, perhaps the NKT’s glory days on Twitter are coming to an end. RoundTeam, a Twitter content management platform, has been watching and investigating and has clamped down on some of the NKT multiple fake accounts.
Furthermore, their latest TweetStorm failed to make the Twitter trending charts despite the record number of Tweets they generated. Has Twitter uncovered the various, fraudulent means they use to flood them with their hashtag spam?
Totally oblivious to the irony of their complaints about foul play on Twitter, Kelly and Peter bemoan their non-appearance in the Twitter trending charts and accuse the Dalai Lama himself for this outcome, through corruption! It’s called “projection” Kelly, or “the pot calling the kettle black”, Peter. So if you’re one of these NKT fake tweeters, it is not the Dalai Lama who is up to crookery and dirty tricks on Twitter – it is you, it is all of you.
See also
- Twitter CEO Dick Costolo: ‘We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls’ – The Independent
Update June 26, 2015
- The strange case of the anti-Dalai Lama protesters trolling Glastonbury – New Statesman / Barbara Speed
Tibetan Buddhism – Struggling With Diffi·Cult Issues 