Blog P.I.

Picking up on the theme of double agents in online politics, last week a member of the Kososphere flagged a newly-created, putative open-membership left-wing YouTube channel (think of it like the video-sharing equivalent of a Yahoo! Group) as a fraud. Far from being a place “for Democrats to collect and share videos,” community member Edgery was pretty sure there were Freepers hiding behind the user account, ready to pounce on the so-called nutroots:

A friend alerted me this morning to a new smear campaign gearing up — The Repugs apparently didn’t like the fact that Olberman [sic] received such huge support over at YouTube so they’ve set up a fake group claiming it is a Democratic group for sharing favorite videos. “A place with all the videos now added this morning. The ones there include a montage of US troops being killed and a smear on the US Marine Corps using Nazi imagery and calling them morons. … THIS IS N-O-T A DEM GROUP; it’s a plant so the right can claim the left is crazy.

The name of the group? UtubeDemos. Demos? That should have been the first tip. The second should have been the clumsily imperative tagline: “Democrats assemble here and share videos.”

Indeed, the channel doesn’t seem to make any sense at all unless it’s a front. Aside from the crude anti-American propaganda, the channel comprises several weak attempts to mine the dated Stephen Hawking voice generator phenomenon, one Top 10 list of bad 80’s songs inexplicably foregrounded by stills from “The Colbert Report,” and some girl-on-girl action that’s relatively demure, even by YouTube’s hard PG-13 standards.

Then again, worn-out parodies, Colbert clips and videos of girls kissing are staples of YouTube, so maybe it’s not that crazy — that is, relatively speaking. The channel is certainly exceedingly dumb, but then again, assholes are like assholes: everybody’s got one (that is to say, they are fairly well-distributed across the ideological spectrum). And who are these assholes? The group’s owner appears ready for a new “technical virgin” spot — um, right — and apparent colleague “peterbbb,” who is proud of being equally anti-Jew and anti-Muslim, seems to have had his account suspended.

And wouldn’t it make just as much sense if the UtubeDemos were actual liberals posing as not-so-bright conservatives so left-wing blogs could post about how stupid and disingenuous those right-wingers really are? And how exactly did Sadly, No! find out about it within an hour of its launch, gimlet-eyed diligence notwithstanding? Even if S,N! are right, it bears asking: If an unsuspecting Bush-hater happened upon this YouTube channel and uploaded sincere leftist propaganda, would that constitute entrapment? And let’s not forget the people who posted all the comments along the lines of:

Remeber this dirtbag: we will hunt you down one by one or in masses and kill you without remorse. You’ve chosen the Marines as your slander target because we are one of your biggest threats.

If the original plan was to make Dems look bad, then presumably these commenters weren’t part of it. But what if the people posting the “get out of my country” (and worse) comments from ostensible Marines are actually dedicated Marine-haters, attempting to make the Corps look bad?

Now my head hurts.