Meat Puppets

Before I started this blog (in fact in the events that directly caused it), my major internet hangout was Wikipedia. My main project for the short time I was there was turning the Telepathy article from a piece of wooish propaganda and something respectably neutral. I've since become a bit disillusioned with Wikipedia's insistence on being neutral over everything, even reality, but that's another story.

Anyways, on Wikipedia as with everything that reaches a certain level of popularity, there were trolls, vandals, and ideologues. Most of them got banned sooner or later, and then most of them created a new account to try to circumvent the ban. Some of them would create multiple accounts in order to give a false appearance that their opinion was more popular. Either of these types of new accounts became known as a Sock Puppet (a term also used in various other places on the net).

But it turned out that not all of the accounts that appeared to be sock puppets actually were, even when they acted just like sock puppets. These accounts turned out to be piloted by people who were recruited by the suspected sock puppeteer for the sole purpose of supporting their view. These accounts became known as "Meat Puppets," as they were essentially people turning themselves into puppets for someone else to act through. Wikipedia eventually came up with a policy regarding meat puppets, which essentially amounts to treating them exactly as sock puppets. They may be piloted by an actual person, but that person isn't bringing their own views to the table; just parroting another's. This way, meat puppets get no votes.

Unfortunately, modern democracy hasn't recognized this problem, and would likely be hesitant to do anything about it even if it did. You can see meat puppetry on the small scale where people recruit friends or family who wouldn't otherwise vote to vote their way. The vote they cast isn't an informed vote, but it's treated as such by the system. Not too long along, I was pressured by one of my friends to do just such a thing and vote for her preferred candidate in a university election. Deciding to avoid looking like a jerk, I evaded the issue, implying that I would do so. It's hard to resist the pressure, but I feel it's important.

Sometimes, though, it gets even worse, and there are full-scale campaigns for meat puppetry. Ever heard of Revenge of the Cradle? It's a political tactic that involves a minority group having significantly higher birthrates than the majority group in order to eventually become the majority. The term was first used by the French Canadians in Quebec as the name for their tactic to gain a majority. You can see the results today, with French-Canadian families commonly having 10-15 children.

The tactic goes back even further than this though. It has been used both by Christian and Islamic groups as a tactic to gain a majority of the population in many areas. They don't come out and say that's what they're doing, but it's the result of their religious commands to "Go forth and procreate" which are reinforced by the religious leaders. (Note that nowadays it's going on much more in the Muslim world. Their birth rates are significantly higher than those of other groups in many mixed areas.) Natural selection acting on societies has led to the societies that produce more children being more survivable and common, so even without intending it in the first place, their procreation has become a political tool.

I'll make no bones about it, this practice is despicable. Imagine a child in a French-Canadian Revenge-of-the-Cradle family. She's young and naive, and she asks her mother about the meaning of life and her purpose in it. What's the mother to say? The child's entire purpose in life, the reason that she was born, was so that when she reached the age of majority, she'd vote French. She's not allowed to think for herself; she's only meant to vote the way her parents intended her to. And they say atheists don't have respect for life.