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.

What do Kimmer and Sam Redman Have in Common?

Kimmer has bragged about writing articles for many years under different pen names, some of them male. Could one of them be Sam Redman? The new poster at LCF that came in as her supporter the other day? The same Samuel that defended Kimmer on ALC when the controversy started?

I don't know the answers to these questions but would like to share parts of a post by Sam Redman from 1999. (Click on the link for the full text. I took the liberty to cut out most of the ramblings and inserted paragraph breaks for readability.)

His musings were in response to the question:

What do you like to do when you play hooky?

..........I could earn money as a writer, but I always felt dishonest about it because i was never writing anything I believed in or in any kind of style that I knew as my own, but I was always willing to prostitute the ability which came from some internal fount that I have never understood, just so I could continue to be, to exist to, always in my mind, do nothing.

I was just about to run out of my last stash of money, which I had gotten by my usual method of journalistic deception..........

.......I spent the next afternoon studying the various geography texts so that I was completely familiar with one particular area.

Then I sat in my apartment........I began to recount the dishonest adventure stories of my personal experiences...........or any other wild and crazy adventure that caught my mind's eye, often stimulated by studying the massive catalog which I had gotten from the Image Bank or other such photography service.

I would look until I found a photo or especially a series of photos and then I would escape to flights of fancy and perhaps an hour later a finished manuscript would emerge, written by one of my alter egos.........

So work for me has always been something I have done on a lark, in a spurt of prostituted inspiration in order to survive, and has really been what I do on my time off, my "day off" in the terminology of the workaday world. And so as my money ran out I looked for yet another writing scam........

-- Sam Redman (sam @ samredman . com), October 05, 1999


While this is supposed to be fiction, doesn't it look as if it describes Kimmer's method to create sockpuppets?


Prudentia has an ongoing discussion about who and what Sam Redman is.

Wannabe Duckies Hard at Work

Searching for Sockpuppets....

Internet Trolls

Wikipedia:
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.

Heidi Diaz, aka Kimmer of Kimkins, is causing a lot of turbulence in the online lowcarb community. Is Kimmer a troll herself? For sure she has appeared as a troll under different names on LCF on numerous occasions. Even on Kimkins, as we well remember Wonderwoman and Melt's rants.

Wikipedia:
Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the newsgroups members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings, and upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they — and the troll — understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group.

The Ducks on the Fascination with Kimmer thread are repeatedly accused of being unwelcoming to newbies and labeling any not previously known person as a troll. Prudentia calls it Friendly Fire.

So why would the Ducks react this way? It is all Heidi's doing! Kimmer is to blame!

MissMerize said:
I have come across other people getting scammed on the web, but the difference was that it was just a financial scamming. When a thing affects your physical and mental health I think it is in a whole other category. Heidi came in like an odorless poisonous gas. She used pictures and words to describe herself as a breath of fresh air. It wasn't until we all inhaled it for a while that we got sick. We were lured into a false sense of security. We appeared to be getting healthier at first and that led us to inhale more and more of the noxious fumes. Fumes like these can change the brain chemistry.

Most of us that have been touched by Kimmer's scam, whether we did the Kimkins Diet or not, have gotten a rude awakening with regards to trusting internet posters on bulletin boards. It was so easy for Kimmer to convince us that she was who she pretended to be. Hardly anybody questioned her as a person, or questioned her success as a dieter during the 6 years she posted on LCF. Why would we? There didn't seem to be any reason for her to be dishonest. Now, we know better. Heidi is a Lying Liar that Lies.

Wikipedia:
A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the newsgroup community. Furthermore, in a group that has become sensitized to trolling — where the rate of deception is high — many honestly naïve questions may be quickly rejected as trollings. This can be quite off-putting to the new user who upon venturing a first posting is immediately bombarded with angry accusations.


Is it strange then that the hackles come up when a new poster appears on the scene? Especially if this poster has an opposing opinion or is using confusing language? How would we know that it's not a troll? While the common advice is "do not feed the troll" I personally think this is necessary in order to find out if it's a troll or not.

And one final quote from Wikipedia:
Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Hmm. Didn't Tippy Toes refer to the Ducks as "terrorists"?

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.