News Expose reveals WDC control in online fan community

[andysol]

Thanks for bringing this up. This practice is so unethical it boggles the mind. But why and how is this even legal? Is this what we've become? Who would take a job like that, where your primary objective is to deliberately lie and deceive, to infiltrate, undermine and destroy healthy and honest communication by pretending to be someone else? How can people who do this for a living live with themselves?

Easiest question of the day.

Answer:

 

[AndyS2992]

It's not a question, honestly.

Those tweets were years old. He was front and center and reporting on it (even breaking the news) first thing yesterday all up until his name got dropped on those old tweet. Then he went silent while staying on all last night reading both threads. He's been on all morning reading the threads. Still hasn't said a word. Currently he's "in conversation".
No matter what he comes out and says now after his nearly 24hrs of lurking and reading, bearing coming clean, I don't believe him. At all. The silence is deafening.

Counter that with @TP2000 who jumped on immediately.

TP2000 didn't jump on immediately he was lurking for hours intermittently and only appeared when people goaded him to, and then he came up with a story denying it all and then another user outed him as a being a fraud and WDC employee and his recent messages are telling people to essentially 'move on and forget about it all'.

 

[Crazydisneyfanluke]

Forget this story. The big news story is the whistleblower SEC investigation into Parks revenue. Disney claims nothing is wrong but the stock moved lower when it broke.

I guess this is when the crap hits the fan?

 

[homerdance]

.............. It should be no surprise to anyone when certain things get "leaked", that the leak was intentional. Whenever you see someone ruthlessly defending a controversial decision by Disney and trying to paint the people reacting negatively as obsessive fanboys, it's very easy to assume these people are Disney shills. Heck, even in this forum's Universal Orlando subforum, there are a handful of posters whom I would not be surprised to discover are Universal shills whose goal is to spin any negative criticism of Universal as Disney fanboy bias.

..............

There are lots of people who don't get the influence paid actors have in media, and how much it occurs. Its not that uncommon for people to write under "false" names, and that goes back to before the founding of the USA. People have being using aliases to influence public opinion for ever. So that part of the article isn't that surprising, but it is very interesting to have names and be able to go back and see what they tried to "influence" the narrative to be.

The other thread has lots of questionable barely on topic posts, which is another way of "influencing" the narrative. Create so much white noise about the topic that it topic at hand becomes lost. There were lots of that happening in spirts/74s old threads, where the entire thread would devolve into a discussion about anything but the original topic. There are people on the other thread bragging that over 80% of the thread is just 5 people goofing off. While i have no knowledge if these are paid actors, their actions diminish the discussion/shock value of the original post, and derail any meaningful discussion on the topic.

There are lots of other ways to derail/steer the conversation, when you read it, just be skeptical.

 

[Tom Morrow]

Can someone explain why Disney would need to use a message board as a focus group? Wouldn't they have plenty of volunteers to make a focus group if they wanted to float ideas?

Focus group might be the wrong term. The obsessive Disney Park Fan demographic is a drop in the bucket for overall Disney park visitors (and as other posters have pointed out, if they cared about our opinions they very clearly haven't been listening much!). Instead, the boards are monitored to see what is being said, because the big criticisms of the parks that spread to the general public start in places like this.

 

[Virtual Toad]

Easiest question of the day.

Answer:

Sigh.

 

[britain]

Man my head hurts...

Longing for when all we could do was try to decipher Martin's clues about D23.

 

[Movielover]

I guess this is when the crap hits the fan?

Man, I picked a hell of a week to stop smoking cigarettes...

 

[Tom Morrow]

TP2000 didn't jump on immediately he was lurking for hours intermittently and only appeared when people goaded him to, and then he came up with a story denying it all and then another user outed him as a being a fraud and WDC employee and his recent messages are telling people to essentially 'move on and forget about it all'.

That, and TP2000 continually emphasizing that he was "laughing so hard his sides hurt" as a reaction was kind of odd.

 

[Tom Morrow]

Um, people are just now realizing you can make a living trolling social media?

I think most people know this. The big reveal here is a company intentionally pushing negative criticism of itself to sabotage it's own CEO and/or high ranking executives in addition to controlling the narrative.

 

[SteamboatJoe]

I think most people know this. The big reveal here is a company intentionally pushing negative criticism of itself to sabotage it's own CEO and/or high ranking executives in addition to controlling the narrative.

If true, it would give a new meaning to Disney being "storytellers".

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Can someone explain why Disney would need to use a message board as a focus group? Wouldn't they have plenty of volunteers to make a focus group if they wanted to float ideas?

It's not the floating of ideas they want...it's manipulation of public perception that is the goal...which can and does affect the career trajectories of high-profile executives.

 

[SirWillow]

Figures I'm a day late and a dollar short to all the drama. Just to help make sure it doesn't get buried and ignored in all of this mess is Kevin Yee's post, which puts a lot of that "article" into doubt:

Whoa now. Sunday just got juicy!!

Some facts:
1. I was Al's co-founder on MiceAge - I had a front row seat, so I know whereof I speak below.
2. It is true that Al has Parkinson's
3. I haven't written for MiceChat in a long time. Last I looked, they were using the name "MiceAge Update" rather than Al's name directly; there was something of a retirement more or less for Al. Could he still be writing occasional articles? Yes, sure. Especially if someone helped him.
4. The very idea that Al didn't write for MiceAge during the SaveDisney years is laughable. That was definitely him. Sure, he had sources, and I suppose they could have included folks in the Iger/Mucha camp. But don't you remember him ridiculing the way Zenia's name was pronounced? Definitely his own voice in those years, so the central premise of the article is wrong.

Since Mr. Synder outed several real names, I suppose it does no harm to reveal he is, in fact, Spirit of 74. Several of you picked up on the tone before I could confirm it.

Knowing that Spirit is the author of that article should change several things for readers. He was frequently a critic of Al, and with Al now sidelined by disease, this feels like a hit piece designed to "win the argument" several years later, and take Al's reputation down a notch.

It was all Al during those SaveDisney years, and he was nowhere close to co-opted by corporate. As noted above, his sources could have included Iger, sure. He could have promoted Iger over others, sure. But nowhere close to what you see with Influencers these days taking handouts and writing "reviews." Al was never comped into anything.

Oh, and for the record, I'm not and haven't been a paid Disney shill (well, except those 5 years as a cast member 10 years ago), but I'm certainly willing to go back on the payroll if they'll pay me to post certain things! LOL

 

[Animaniac93-98]

TP2000 didn't jump on immediately he was lurking for hours intermittently and only appeared when people goaded him to, and then he came up with a story denying it all and then another user outed him as a being a fraud and WDC employee and his recent messages are telling people to essentially 'move on and forget about it all'.

And the only person willing to tell TP2000s side of the story was...himself.

The article itself was not enough to convince me, but other members here figuring it out and posting their evidence, that was enough.

 

[SeaCastle]

Anyone insisting that it is ludicrous of TWDC to waste its time with online fan message boards is at best naive and at worst misdirecting from the fact that companies, political operations, nonprofits, etc. regularly use traditional and social media to achieve various ends. Having sat in on strategy meetings with a public affairs group, this kind of thing is quite literally the bread and butter for how PR operations work these days. And if you want to get cute about what being "employed by TWDC" really means, realize that there are PR and public affairs firms lining up at the door to do the dirty work on behalf of their client as a contractor.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

I subscribe to the theory that Dreamfinder and 74 are brothers.

Suggesting they are literally the same person makes @wdwmagic look either clueless or ambivalent about someone pretending to be two people on his site for years, which is not flattering and only feeds the desire of the ECardonWalker twitter account (itself looking for attention) to rile things up.

 

[Jimmy Thick]

I think most people know this. The big reveal here is a company intentionally pushing negative criticism of itself to sabotage it's own CEO and/or high ranking executives in addition to controlling the narrative.

I don't think its as big a reveal as people on this forum is making it out to be as this stuff has been going on since Usenet it was just far more secretive and controlled.

Its far easier now for companies or media conglomerates to create an account/accounts on Youtube or Facebook or whatever social media flavour of the month, make a few negative comments and sit back and wait for the aftermath of those comments to gauge the direction of whatever narrative they want examined. Its rather brilliant of you think about it, as long as it don't get out.

As for sabotaging its own CEO, remember these are publicly traded companies, if a billion dollar brand has a perception issue from the general public, as a shareholder I demand any and every avenue explored so my investment returns as much profit as possible and I applaud such outside the box thinking to do so. A CEO can be replaced, a shareholder dumping billions in stocks cannot be as easily.

 

[UNCgolf]

Anyone insisting that it is ludicrous of TWDC to waste its time with online fan message boards is at best naive and at worst misdirecting from the fact that companies, political operations, nonprofits, etc. regularly use traditional and social media to achieve various ends. Having sat in on strategy meetings with a public affairs group, this kind of thing is quite literally the bread and butter for how PR operations work these days. And if you want to get cute about what being "employed by TWDC" really means, realize that there are PR and public affairs firms lining up at the door to do the dirty work on behalf of their client as a contractor.

I can definitely verify that large corporations hire PR firms etc. specifically to engage via Twitter, Facebook, message boards, etc. (I've specifically seen Powerpoints where they lay out their strategies to corporate execs) and often clandestinely. I'm not saying I've seen Powerpoints intended for Disney, but I have seen them for other massive multinational corporations.

I don't think anyone would be surprised by that, though.

 

[Phil12]

That was quite the long read. Reminds of old pompous rambling posts that used to frequent these boards...

Indeed, General Grizz is gone, but I can bear it.

 

[tissandtully]

I subscribe to the theory that Dreamfinder and 74 are brothers.

Suggesting they are literally the same person makes @wdwmagic look either clueless or ambivalent about someone pretending to be two people on his site for years, which is not flattering and only feeds the desire of the ECardonWalker twitter account (itself looking for attention) to rile things up.

I have on good authority that Gary Snyder has a brother that was blogging with him on a certain site, and then were asked not to.