Talk Elections

Deserves to own the Atlas and all the internet after today.

A very clever guy.

He can be genuinely amusing, but the kiss-ass chorus that ensues whenever he descends pisses me off.

Apparently he's a sock of Sam Spade, or so the theory goes. Regardless, he's hilarious. FF.

That makes a lot of sense.

FF

He's not a sock. He has a legitimate independent IP (which traces to a university's computers...)

This. He's often hilarious, but he's not god.

That said, neither are the other 5 or so guys that have devotees, although my personal posting deity (angus) is clearly better than your god, so nyah nyah.

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kljackson > all

I actually think I know who he is.

HP FF after the latest post.

Considering they post from a good 3,000 miles apart, that'd be a mean feat.

Sam Spade?  I may be accepting a small chance that I eat my own hat eventually, but there's not a chance in hell.

It is of course possible to evade sock detection and "post" from distant locations that aren't proxies, but few people would make the effort, and most of those that would probably couldn't figure out how to do it.

But he is a professor, so you can't put anything past him.

He's all right but he's not that funny. Neither the subject matter nor the delivery strikes me as being that difficult to pull off. I find several others considerably more impressive.

Legend in the making

Eh, that was the theory somebody had on the Atlas board.

Voting HP won't help you get a girl.

Makes Vanderblubb look like a simpleton when it comes to trolling......our dear Professor is perfection in action.

FF

And kal wins thread! :)

Seriously, Dave should make TheProfessor an admin.

"Post deleted for 10/10 infraction points

Reason: Liking Mitt Romney will not help you get girls"

He's fantastic, and not something Sam's sense of humor could have generated.

No, and I have been assured that he's not the Blubb in disguise.

Why can't you guys just accept that he's not a sock of an already existing user?

Because real users just aren't at his level of humor, I believe is their rationale.

Why would some random person come to this forum and make an account like that?

This.

He may not be a sock, but he's been here before.

Perhaps the most overrated member in this forum's existence.

Jeez, you and Gustaf are quite the buzzkills.

I like him

FF

I recall seeing someone speculate that he's Aizen, a long-lost forumite of yesteryear, but there's not really any way of confirming that.

Aizen was from CO too IIRC......and the Professor is......so maybe, but I didn't think Aizen had it in him, so neh ;)

I wonder how many death points he has.

Aizen would make a lot of sense...

He is an expertly constructed persona.

Why not?  I'm sure lots of people who are interested in politics lurk on this board for a long time before posting, if they ever post.  Is it really so strange that 1 out of 1000 people who eventually do so make a joke account?

another issue is he shows a knowledge of the community well beyond his "years".

this confirms my suspicion.

A complete and utter troll, but he's very funny. FF, I suppose. Perhaps he is dave.

May I ask if you think the account is a sock, which the mods all deny? I have zero skills for some reason when it comes to figuring out stuff like this. Maybe I had a mini stroke or something that killed off that part of my brain.

Looking at his history he seems to have become more refined over time- before it was just stupid, now it's actually funny and witty.

I'm not sure how that's a deal-breaker.  I started lurking on this forum in the run-up to the 2006 midterms and read it regularly through 2007, but only registered in November 2007.  I assume there are plenty of other users who have been reading the forum for years before registering.

Hints?

You've got to be kidding.

whoever it is is surely enjoying all of this speculation and attention.

Well how about angus (that boy knows how to write), except that the mods said the IP address was on the west coast. Who lives on the west coast?  Doesn't Washington have a rather colorful character up there? 

Speculating on TheProfessor's identity won't help you get girls.

Perhaps they're attempting to determine his identity in order to seek further counsel on that subject.

Unless you are speculating while doing bench presses - either 4 rep sets at your maximum weight, or 12 rep sets done very rapidly at your maximum weight for that - to get at that muscle type that gives you that cut look, and which ripple when you flex your arms. What happened to the King of the Bench Press by the way? :)

I thought that was you.

KotBP was banned I believe.

Colorado, not the West Coast.  We don't want to get more specific than that, because that'd be an invasion of privacy, but he's posting from Colorado from a legitimate-looking IP.

How can you tell if an IP is legitimate-looking?

Because most of the ones that aren't trace to proxy services.

You think we have the same posting styles or something?  :)

No, I thought you were the king of the bench press. Or is that not an honorific but a username?

Neither FF nor HP, just an unnecessarily hyped poster.

The latter. As to the former, thank you so much, but that would be well - hyperbole. :P  But give me some more time, and a reincarnation, where I can drop a couple of decades, and perhaps it will not be. :)

This thread risks turning into a "how to" guide for evading detection as a sock.  Suffice it to say, the normal means for telling if an account is a sock don't show anything suspicious about him, but if one is sneaky enough, then one can hide one's sockiness and there's nothing we can do about it.  In this case, The Professor is either legit, or someone who's done a good job of hiding his sockiness.

...or the sock creator is a mod without enemies among the other mods. That would work too.

All right, an FF.

My theory is that he's a sock of Dave Leip.  But then, that's my working assumption for all suspicious posters.

That would be a subscenario of the above scenario (which is not "my theory", but merely a possibility I would not dismiss.)

Hey, that was my theory first.

That theory has existed since long before you registered here, simnoob.

With the important distinction that Dave could actually change the software to fool the rest of the mods, whereas "regular" mods would have to depend on the goodwill of their fellow mods not to out any sock accounts.

Which is...?

You just pretend to live in Vegas. You actually live in Colorado Springs, and your avatar is not a joke but actually bears your true color. I think that is what he is saying, don't you Joe?

And how would that work? TheProfessor registered on March 28, 2011. I registered on June 28, 2011. Three months is not "long before". Unless you know something we don't.

Various moderators are claiming he's legitimate. I believe them.

Even if he's not... look, I don't give a crap whether The Professor is a sock, fake poster, joker etc. etc. He's amusing as hell and that's what matters.

It is in the moderators' interest to say that he is legitimate, Kal. I don't see why some random person would come here to talk about posters instead of politics.

Moderators are very fond is declaring someone an illegimate acount, not otherwise.

He made this too? An Atlas legend. Must be a sock.

The theory has been applied to other characters before.

I don't think I ever said it on the forum, but for the longest time I was convinced that WalterMitty was the real Dave Leip, and that the Leip account was just a fake persona he used to be an impartial admin and such.

I might be Dave Leip...