Wackos to Obliterate: Book Three (Chapter 7)
“Isn’t it illegal to troll on the internet?” Sophie asked her son, Karl, as they drove to the supermarket.
He glanced at her sitting on the passenger side. “Why are you asking me? Wouldn’t it be easier just to make a search yourself?”
“You’re right, but I’m still used to getting news by talking with people. I guess that’s a generation gap, huh?”
“What is?”
“I remember a few years ago, I was having a conversation with Jenny over lunch at the Lebanese restaurant off of Woodlawn …”
“Which one? There are two on Woodlawn,” he interrupted.
“The other one is a lounge, it doesn’t have lunch. This is the one with the name that starts with a Z.”
“Zorba.”
“That’s Greek, not Lebanese. It’s Zay something. Anyway, I ordered the Mediterranean Quesadilla, which is supposedly their specialty,” she said, watching the Little Arkansas River alongside the highway with Oak Park beginning to appear on the opposite bank.
“Is that ‘speciality’ or ‘specialty’?”
“That's exactly what I asked her. The menu had ‘speciality’ written on it, while I always thought it was ‘specialty.’ If I had a smart phone at the time, I guess I could have found the answer pretty quickly. Instead, I asked Jenny and we got into this stupid squabble over the spelling. Since it was spelled with the extra ‘i’ on the menu, she was sure that was right and I had my head up my ass (to pardon the expression). People of your generation would immediately check it online without going through the petty back and forth we did,” she ended, still looking out the window as more of the park became visible.
Karl stared at the cars navigating in front of him and tried to recall how they got into this diversion about spelling and then remembered that she asked about trolling being legal. “So, why did you ask me about trolling? Why don’t you get Summit to hunt the fuckers down? You lost your friggin’ job because of it, didn’t you?”
Watching Oak Park come and begin to go, she nodded. “It was just a matter of time anyway, I think,” she said and turned to look at him. “What I’m worried about is the future. Those pictures of me are all over the internet with lots of attacks against me and the group. The last couple of days, Ryuji’s been hit and now Brad keeps bothering me about appearing at one of the Dog shows.”
“Wasn’t he targeted after appearing with Diamond Dogs?”
“Exactly; that’s why I’m hesitant. It’d be nice to get a chunk of the money they’re making on tour, though.”
Karl smiled at the mention of money. “I’m amazed at how long it takes before royalties kick in. My image is musicians rolling in the cash as soon as a song becomes a hit.”
“That’s called an advance. Unfortunately, since we were in shadowland for so long, Summit refused to risk anything upfront. That’s the prejudice the industry has against those who already had their fifteen minutes of fame.” Oak Park vanished as they continued down West 13th Street. “Isn’t your old high school just past that bridge?”
“It hasn’t moved, Mother. So, if you do perform, where would it be?”
“I think they’re going to be in Chicago tonight. Ryuji’s going to perform again with them there.”
“After what just happened? Man, he’s a glutton for punishment,” Karl said as he noticed his alma mater pass by.
“The first African-American mayor of Wichita went there,” Sophia said in a slightly sarcastic sing-song way as though it was something too frequently said about North Wichita High. “See Karl, you have the chance to be someone prominent; maybe even the first African-American governor of Kansas, huh?”
“That sounds strange considering 84% of the population’s white.”
“In reality, the same percentage of white exists in you considering your father and considering what went on in ‘the days of slavery’ that became my side of the DNA pool.” The part about ‘slavery’ she sang like an old Reggae tune.
Trink sat watching TV with Limey resting on his blue-jeaned-covered lap and turned towards Madelyn as she put down her phone. “Who was that?”
“Karl said Sophie was wondering if and when you were planning to perform with the Dogs. Also, he wanted to know if we heard any updates from Summit about the trolls.”
“You’re the manager.”
“That’s why he called me and not you,” she said.
“So, what did you tell him?”
“In answer to the first question: I don’t know. In answer to the second question: no.”
Of course, there were employees at Summit who were looking for ways to curtail the huge deluge of negative comments on websites that had been written about the TRinkets. In fact, the IT department had extensive experience in handling complaints, the occasional troll, the young music fan who can’t keep from writing any thought about his/her idol, even the machine-generated spam advertisement that tried to appear as a reader’s comment. For these kinds of problems, the usual approach was mostly effective: apologize for making a mistake; be exceptionally clear in policies, etc.; try to respond in the place that the comment voiced a concern; and step away from the argument if the comments keep getting crazier. The easiest thing was to delete any comment that appeared to be marketing spam.
The TRinket problem was more complicated since the comments were by registered users of the websites on which they wrote. In addition, they were written on websites not under the control of Summit, so the IT department at Summit could do very little to curtail their postings. Indeed, most of the websites in which they posted would be hard-pressed to find justification for deleting the posts since they never violated rules concerning obscenity or threats of violence. The only problems these sites suffered and the only arguments Summit could use in convincing sites to remove these comments were their negativity and their tendency to dominate, in frequency, the comment sections.
The TRinkets' manager and the producer, Brad Marden, kept badgering Summit to find ways to handle the comments that invariably popped up on any website posting content about either the band or marijuana legalization. Unfortunately, the IT department could not find a way to get a handle on what was happening to the TRinkets. It was as though a cyber-octopus, with immense tentacles, waited to attack any Trinket-related content. Most in the IT department were convinced the number of people that appeared to be writing the comments did not reflect reality since many could be the same person using VPN or something (like having multiple computers) to register multiple accounts without having them linked to the same IP address or even the same machine.
They ran user data from the past three months through an algorithm they had set up and found that close to 500 valid user names were responsible for more than 80% of the negative-leaning comments about the TRinkets and/or legalization. They discovered that all of those users had consistent IP addresses scattered throughout the world, without a concentration in any one particular geographical zone. In a nutshell, they could not discern a pattern to the distribution. As a result, they couldn’t target any as trolls who violated the rules of any website on which they wrote.
One alarming point concerning the user names was that a large number of them had signed up to dozens of websites on which they wrote regularly. In fact, it appeared these users would write over 100 comments per day. In actuality, if one person had several user names, that person would write 300 or more comments a day. Obviously, that meant there were people working full-time at trolling. Who would pay for such an effort? The implications set shivers up the spines of the IT people at Summit. Were they drug syndicates, were they the Feds, or were they the new Cybercom arm of the American military? Did such activity start with the legalization issue and the TRinkets, or had it existed before? Was it a syndicate of trolls that had existed since the early days of the internet and been influencing the cultural zeitgeist?
The main function of the IT department at Summit Records, however, was to set up and maintain websites for musical acts under contract to the corporation. Of course, this included the TRinkets and the Dogs, both of which were kept clean of the deluge of negativity that dominated the webpages outside their control. No doubt due to fans searching for information about the Dogs tour, their site received quite a lot of traffic. Once Ryuji performed at the St. Louis show, however, the number of hits it received skyrocketed as the rumor spread that each show from now until the end of the tour would include a guest appearance of one TRinket member in addition to Bowen and Diamond from the Dogs. Which member would show up, however, was a secret. As a result, the chat room was full of fan speculation on who would appear at the next show. Since it was now known where Ryuji, Sophie and Trink lived, it was pretty easy to make the assumption that the member closest geographically to the venue would appear. That was true with Ryuji for both St. Louis and Chicago. No doubt, that would be true for Indianapolis as well.
Such an increase in the traffic on the Dogs site was reported to management and subsequently it was reported to Brad since he handled the Diamond Dogs for Summit and he would go down the food chain to Madelyn whose job it was to firm up the schedule. In such a role, however, Madelyn didn’t feel at ease since she knew Trink still felt violated over his run-in with those kids while he was out walking Limey.
Madelyn and Brad were seated in the small studio Brad had set up in his house. They met there since it was a little more isolated from other sections of the house and since, being a studio, it seemed connected to the music industry.
“Money appears to be the biggest problem we have with deciding who plays where,” Madelyn said, watching Brad sit at a mixing board and unconsciously move a couple of sliders back and forth.
“That no longer seems to be a problem. Once the powers-that-be were told the fan traffic on the Dogs’ site was massive and that the buzz focused on what TRinket would appear when, they decided it was very profitable to keep the fans guessing at who would play at any one concert. It was left to us to decide whom to place where. All transportation and accommodation will be covered ASAP,” he said while moving his fingers around the mixing board as though he were reminiscing about an old recording session.
Madelyn smiled either at his actions or at a thought she had. “Mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne – the whole nine yards?” she asked.
“Ryuji was bitching about paying for his own gas; that will no longer be a problem. Anyway, the point is, we need to keep this interesting, so we should try to maintain the factor of surprise as much as is possible.”
Links to the previous chapters of Book Three
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-1)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-2)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-3)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-4)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-5)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-6)
Copyright (©) by Kenneth Wayne