In times like these, we need to remember the simple things, and I decided on the holy hand receipts left of Metokur, and its Opslord, Habermann.
Gather around and read the wise words of Habermann that I painstakingly typed from screenshots.
1. Mask Your Own Nasty Habits:
In much the same way that an employee knows it's his boss shouting to him from across the office by the sound and tone of his voice, people online can sometimes identify each other from their typing habits. If you're one of those freaks who insists on employing proper capitalization and punctuation in your internet postings, it do you well to forget a period every now and again and type in all lowercase (All uppercase is too suspicious for a good cover.) If you spell check every message twice and type in full and proper English, it's time to start making rather blatant spelling mistakes and abuse obnoxious web acronyms. Other subtleties one might employ are run-on sentences, keeping your entire posts within gigantic paragraphs that most people won't bother to double-check, and discussing subjects that would normally make you fall asleep as if you get off to it every night.
2. Disassociate Your New Self From Your Old Self:
If your targets know who you are outside of your new identity, then don't go ahead and use your new identity to give your old one pats on the fucking back and 5-star video rating. All too ofiten, imbeciles attempting infiltration will make the mistake of subscribing to themselves with their new YouTube accounts, befriending themselves on Myspace and Facebook to inflate their own ego, and even go os far as to hold conversations with themselves on public forum thinking that will somehow help their fucking cover. Spoiler alert, shitsheads: (It's unclear who Habermann is referring to here). The key to keeping your cover undercover is to keep it entirely independent of your main identity; not to pit the two against each other in some attempt to make it look like your new identity loathes you.
The Exception to the Rule
If your infiltrating whichever group or organization you're trying to infiltrate hinges entirely upon your new identity fucking hating your old one, than so be it. But for fuck's sake, be subtle about it, and treat your self-hatred as one of your many interests as opposed to the sole reason you use the internet. As much as the enemy organization might love your dedication, you'll eventually end up raising eyebrows if you don't favorite a video of a cat or something now and again to make it clear that flaming yourself on the world wide web isn't your life's fucking work Even a troll has to have hobbies, for shit's sake.
3. A Potential Friend of a Friend is a Friend Indeed:
Make sure to send out friend requests to people with similar interests to the members of the group you are infiltrating, and to join other groups with similar goals. For example: Let's say you're infiltrating a group dedicated to a single video game series. Be sure to make friends on YouTube who are huge fans of that same game. If you're infiltrating a trolling group, associate yourself with other trolls, who may even blatantly adverise their being trolls. However, make sure that not all your new friends happen to be members of the group you're infiltrating, otherwise you'll end up looking more suspicious than you are genuinely interested.
4. Mediocrity is Better Than Exemplary:
Be sure to contribute to the group cause as you may need to, but make sure you don't go ahead and do anything too awesome or noteworthy. Attention is attention, even if your new friends fucking love. All that temporary affection means is, they'll want to know more about you, and that can lead to no good. If you're rolling with trolls, make small contributions such as simple flame comments and short Windows Movie Maker videos: Don't actually drive anyone off of YouTube or convince them to swear off Facebook. It's best to just blend in, and keep your head low.
Other General Helpful Tops: - Allow accounts to age for some time before submitting your application or shining up for your target group.
- Be sure to register forum accounts, instant messenger screennames, and to associate your new handle with other internet services.
- If your target is hobby-based, be sure to have a general knowledge of the hobby at hand before joining in on discussions.
- If your target group expects you to being a particular skill to the table or lend a hand in their operations, make sure to have a "resume" of past experiences and to have some achievements under your belt. Even if it means claiming someone else's [obscure] work as your own, have something to show before showing off.
- Keep your identity active outside of the group to appear more like a legitimate internet user and less like a mindless grunt soldier who's every action is for the betterment of the organization.
~ Habermann - July 9th, 2010.