Kimkins Sockpuppets

I wrote a post a while back where I voiced my suspicion that many posters on Kimkins are in fact sockpuppets.

That suspicion was based on the unrealistic avatars they are using. Clearly, if you are not trying to lose weight, or the picture is not of you in the first place, you don't care that the proportions make you look heavier.

In addition to the avatars, there are also many posts by "newbies" and they all have in common that not only are they enthusiastic about the Kimkins diet, but they are also born cheerleaders from the get-go. They just don't sound like "real" people to me. I have spent 4 years on diet boards, and I just don't recognize this type of posts.

Some time back, someone found this ad on GetAFfreelancer:

Description: I'm trying to drum up some action at a weight loss/dieting forum that I am running.

Please only bid on this project if you are knowledgeable with weight/loss dieting because I don't want a lot of nonsensical posts!

1. Sign Up Under 5 Different Names

2. Average about 2 posts per day for each name.

3. The Different Names Should Be Talking To Each Other (yes you get to talk to yourself!)

4. Only Post On Topic. Weight/Loss/Exercise/Diet. (The Forum has different sections, make sure you are posting in the right section.)

5. If You See People Posting Who Are NOT YOU (I may hire more people to post and there may be other "real" posters as well.) Talk To Them Before Talking To Yourself.

6. Never Post Links.

7. Never Copy/Paste From Other Sites.

8. Each Post Should Be At Least One Sentence Long. And Each Day You Should Make At Least Two Long Posts (4 sentences or more.)

9. Make It Look Natural!

10. Make a total of 10 posts per day. At the end of the project each user name should have approximately (but not exactly) 60 posts each. For example one name may be 65 and another 55. You can make 5 posts in one day with one name and 3 on another and 2 on another. It's up to you. But you have to have 5 total names and a total of 300 posts between them. You have to use at least 3 different names per day. And do not go more than 3 days without using a name.

11. English only.

12. I recommend using the same password for all 5 names so you do not forget it. When you win this project I will send you the forum address and then you can sign up your 5 user names - Once you have done so - Please email me with the 5 user names so I can keep track of your work.

This is a 30 day project. So in total there will be 300 posts (10 x 30 = 300) ... But keep in mind when bidding that many of the posts will be short. You should not have to spend more than 15 to 20 minutes a day to complete this project.

If this works well and you do a good job - I will possibly hire you for another month of the same work.

This particular ad was not for Kimkins, but another unrelated diet board. But isn't it likely that Heidi Diaz has done the same? It's easy to put up an ad on craigslist or a Work-At-Home board. Not very expensive either.

While employing sockpuppets is surely unethical, I do not know if it's illegal. Not really important as Heidi Diaz has other more serious legal problems to worry about.

However, I feel sad for the REAL people at Kimkins that are interacting with sockpuppets. I would feel very betrayed if I found out that someone I had a long term relationship with on the internet was a "fictional character". Just as I feel betrayed by Heidi Diaz from her misrepresentation of herself as a successful dieter, even though I had little interaction with her myself.

Gary - Update

I had found the picture of the Gary Fontaine a while ago but as I wasn't convinced it had anything to do with Kimkins' Admin Gary, I didn't want to post a picture of an innocent person.

It wasn't until I found the article about the Southbridge Gary possibly being a less than honest person (which are still nothing more than allegations as far as I know) that I decided that that Gary was already a public person, so, why not?

However, looking at people search, the Southbridge Gary does not fit with what Admin Gary has posted about himself on Kimkins as Gary E of Southbridge is 53 years old.

There is a Gary R in Willimantic, CT that fits the bill. 56 years old with a 91 year old father. Lived previously in FL, which has also been mentioned by Admin Gary.

Another candidate that was brought up on LCF, was a Gary R in Longmeadow, MA, but he is only 42 years old.

While the Gary R Fontaine in Willimantic fits what Admin Gary has said about himself, this is no "proof" that it actually is him. Anybody can find the information on people search (like I did) and adopt an identity for an online persona.

Weight Loss Success Story

Dee, the latest Kimkins' sockpuppet has a blog post with the title "KIMKINS - the perspective of a success story".

So, is Dee a weight loss "success story"? She has lost 100 pounds in 11 months or so, starting at around 345 pounds in June 2007. Certainly an accomplishment, but does it constitute a weight loss "success story"? In my opinion, it's too early to tell. She is still following a diet that has proven to not be sustainable for many that have tried it. If Dee comes back in a year and reports that she has kept the 100 pounds off, I will consider it a "success story". Until then, the jury is still out.

Remember that Dee's "diet adviser" Kimmer said that she once lost 100 pounds in 6 months. Was that a "success story"? Judging from the picture below, I would say no.



Where is the "success" in losing weight if it's not going to stay off?

Dee seems to have the same opinion as Kimmer when it comes to claiming being an expert on weight loss. I fail to see how many years of unsuccessfully trying to lose weight, or failing to keep weight off make anyone an "expert".

This is what Dee posted on the BBB Kimkins' review:

I have more than 30 years of dieting experience, so I feel more than qualified. If you are interested here is my resume:
1) Weight Watchers....more times than I can count
2) System 7......twice
3) Diet Workshop.....more than 5 times
4) Weigh Down workshop....once
5) LAPBAND....once
6) Do it yourself'ers.....more than a dozen.
7) Hospital based Liquid Diet....twice

And now, Kimkins of course.

Recovering from a Cult

Kimkins has been labeled as a cult in several blog posts:
Kimkins Cult Mentality
Kimkins Cult Mentality Revisited
Kimkins - A Cult

And the latest Kimkins defecter, AmyB, is also calling Kimkins a cult on her blog

Magicsmom says: Every one of us who was taken in by Heidi has to go through a process which is exactly like grieving. You go through stages, and I believe it is very similar to this:

The seven stages of grief are:

* Shock or Disbelief
* Denial
* Bargaining
* Guilt
* Anger
* Depression
* Acceptance and Hope

Why do people leave? How do people leave?

Members typically:

1. walk away

2. are thrown out (banned)

3. lose their group to dissolution

4. or are convinced to leave by outside people

in roughly that numerical order.

"Walkaways" may leave gradually because of love for family or friends or what is called "cognitive dissonance" — a growing realization that the ideals of the group are at odds with their actions. They may float into new groups or eventually return to their original group. Frequently they do not face the damage that they have endured, and they experience reduced functionality for many, many years.

Banned members are tossed out by their leaders or groups for real or imagined offenses — or to keep other members in line. This group may experience the most traumatic re-entrance into mainstream society. They usually have not rejected the beliefs or leader of their group and have the added guilt and shame of having been rejected.

Someone involved in the disbandment of their group may experience an ego-strengthening sense of power and control. If the group disbanded against their wishes, they may experience a depth of despair similar to a castaway (banned).

Those who are counseled out, through persuasions, or the like, usually experience the smoothest and quickest recovery.

reFOCUS: Recovering Former Cultists' Support Network

The keys to recovery after leaving a high-demand group or cult are:

Education or knowledge

Support

Patience

Education

The over-riding factor is education: educating oneself about what happened to you while in the group and why it still affects you after you leave. Its crucial to understand the techniques that were used to gain your compliance, to shut down your critical thought processes, to manipulate your experiences and your emotions, to isolate you psychologically and sometimes physically from gaining information and feedback from the world outside the group. These techniques have an effect for quite some time after you leave the group. And it is important to understand that these lasting effects are normal under the circumstances, and that they will begin to dissipate once you do understand them and can begin to unravel them.

Support

It is so important to build a support team for yourself. Look for people who are willing to learn and to be there for you when you need to talk or to just spend some time together. The most powerful support can be found in other former members of groups have had very similar experiences to your own and are going through the recovery process as well. It is so good to be around people who really get it!

Patience

Yes, I know it is hard to be patient with yourself in the recovery process. Remember, we had a lot of practice living on the edge and being expected to produce results yesterday. A residual effect of living that way is to expect recovery yesterday and to be very impatient with ourselves. Also, remember when you were in the group, the leaders or the ideology could never be wrong if something was wrong, guess who it was! So, we tend to say whats wrong with me in the recovery process. Guess what. There is nothing wrong with you. Recovery takes time. It takes education. It takes support. And it takes giving yourself a break.

Edited to add:
A comment reminded me that I didn't fully finish this post.

While I have no problem calling Kimmer and Singing Ass "Cult Leaders" (even if the latter is just a wannabe) I do not want to attach the label cult to the former Kimkins members.

While many Kimkins members that leave go through stages of feelings that are similar to people that are leaving a cult, Kimkins did not encompass the member's entire life in the same way as a religious cult so the "recovery" process should be easier.

I also forgot to include links to where to find support and to meet up with other people that have left or been banned from Kimkins:

• Low Carb Friends has an active thread with people trying to shut Kimkins.con down. Kimkins discussions are detained to this one thread. Many ex-kimkinites find it a useful place to vent anger while others see it as Kimkins bashing. Then you might want to find one of the many diet support groups on LCF instead.

• Active Low Carber Forum has many diet support groups.

• Jimmy Moore's forum is a meeting place for many ex-kimkinites but the Kimkins Diet is strongly discouraged.

• Amy Eating Low is also a forum where many ex-kimkinites hang out, including Amy herself.

• Big Huge Minds is a brand new, very friendly forum.

Sockpuppets

Wikipedia:

A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an Internet community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to, like a puppeteer manipulating a hand puppet.

In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a NY Times article claims that "sock-puppeting" is defined as "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company."

The key difference between a sockpuppet and a regular pseudonym is the active exploitation of the pretense that the puppet is a third party who is not affiliated with the puppeteer.

I was an early member of Kimkins (June 2006) but soon lost interest and didn't return to the board until the controversy started in July 2007. I immediately was surprised by the large number of "success in progress" stories that seemed unbelievable. The more I read, the more unbelievable it became.

Unbelievable is really the keyword here. Yes, I know that you see huge, quick losses on a low carb diet in the beginning, especially if the starting weight is high. But these people were happily posting for weeks while they survived on 400 - 500 calories, never had a stall, never had any problems sticking to the diet, never had craving, never were hungry, never complained about not feeling well. Unbelievable. I have been posting daily on lowcarb boards for 4 years, and I have never seen anything like it.

These posters also lacked personality. They were just reporting on their menu, their weight loss and how happy they were with the diet. Again, a characteristic I did not recognize from other boards where you get to know your fellow posters pretty quickly, or at least get some sense of the person behind the keyboard.

I'm sure the majority of these successful posters were Kimmer sockpuppets. Her admins at the time of the big inrush of new members when the WW magazine came out report that Kimmer hardly posted at the time. I think she did, just not using the name Kimmer. She was busy inventing fictional characters and posting as all these sockpuppets that created a happy and positive atmosphere.

I can just imagine how the members felt about themselves when they read those posts with their shiny lies -- "Other people are doing so well, what's wrong with me? I need to try harder, I need to eat less, I must be the only one who's failing, or the only one who's feeling so ill..."

I'm not sure the use of sockpuppets constitute fraud in the legal sense, but it is certainly unethical. Kimmer is using sockpuppets to promote her business, for her own gain.

In addition to the success stories, there recently has been a large number of a different type of sockpuppets. These are "newbies", not all new members but all with few posts. They seem to be used as "fillers" to promote the sense of more active members on the site. They are characterized by either having a generic avatar or a distorted one, similar to this:



Now, this could be due to technical difficulties, similar to what Tippy Toes once had:
Well we are having some kind of tech problem. Don't laugh but I had changed my avitor from the bikini pic to one in a black dress. This morning when I logged on the pic was all stretched out like a fun mirror at the circus. I looked like I gained all 112 lbs back overnight, RFLMAO! Now I have this flower till I figure out what happened. Still laughing!

This is a weight loss board. Would you post a picture that shows you a lot heavier than you are? Tippy didn't. She replaced the picture until tech support had helped her post it so it showed up in right proportions. So why are these distorted avatars so common on Kimkins? It's obvious that they originally were 3x5 pictures that got posted as 5x5. Here is the original of the above picture:


Is Kimmer starting to be sloppy? Doesn't care anymore to keep up appearances? The remaining members don't care, or all they all sockpuppets? I think it's a combination of all of these.