Who/what was Claig? Where are they now?

[thesmallestpotato]

Does anyone remember Claig? She/he/it was prolific on here in the run up to the referendum then she completely disappeared and doesn't seem to have been back. Just seems odd that someone so fiercely pro Brexit would just disappear. I'm getting horribly anxious about it all - I suppose I'm looking for reassurance and was hoping to come on here and see that Claig was still here telling us why everything's going to be OK...

[ContinuityError]

Pro-Brexit and Pro-Trump.

He/she/it finally imploded on a Trump thread, but by then teh job was done.

[MullofKintire]

I don‘t think Claig was one person. Posts were too long, too prolific and appeared throughout the day and night. I thought it was some kind of UKIP account.

[thesmallestpotato]

That's really scary - why didn't MNHQ block the account?

[twofingerstoEverything]

There's a thread going at the moment that has a new-to-MN-poster who sounds pretty Claig-like.

[HaventGotAllDay]

Whilst loathing almost every opinion claig had, I got on ok with them.

[BertrandRussell]

OooKip will be tearing up the lawn come the next election!

[thesmallestpotato]

How many people will Claig have swayed to vote leave though, the posts were so convincing! Which thread is that twofingers?

[PortiaCastis]

Claig seemed like a bot as she was posting on here day and night so for that reason I didn't read all of her posts I just skimmed through them and I think she was overcome when trump was elected

There was another like her called isitmebut who I thought worked for Conservative central office as her tory novels came thick and fast but I didn't let either of these posters influence me one way or the other because they were both over egging the pudding

[Tanith]

Isitmebut toddled off to Netmums for a while under a different name. They threw him off for posting under false pretences - he was actually a man - so he came back here for a bit under a different name. Kept to the Politics threads this time, though.

[BareBelliedSneetch]

Claig was very anti climate change as well I think?

[borntobequiet]

Claig did respond with a when I congratulated them on passing the Turing test. But evidently a shill/bot. Convincing? Only to the gullible.

[mathanxiety]

I thought Claig was banned. S/he was around for a long time before Brexit so I don't think s/he was a bot or a group. I got the impression Claig was an older woman. Could be wrong of course but I used to run across her on different boards and built my impression from them all.

Definitely pro UKIP, pro Trump and a Brexiteer, but that doesn't equal 'Russian'. Or a bot. People have the right to be wrong (and obv Claig exercised this right to the full). There are lots of people like her IRL.

[Holidayshopping]

But evidently a shill/bot.

Really?

[LikeDolphinsCanSwim]

Yeah, he/she was prolific for a long time before brexit existed. Used “scum” a lot, which I always notice.

[AlunWynsKnee]

The bizarre thing was Claig posted like a normal person about baking or other topics occasionally and you could engage with them. Isit was a barrage of underlined content that was impossible to 'talk' to.

[SwedishEdith]

Claig was pro-Corbyn as well. I also thought older woman who got caught up in the excitement of posting and the attention.

But then they said they'd support Marine Le Pen if it got the result they wanted or something and they got banned not long after, I think.

[TangyToms]

Yes I remember claig...at least 'it' would engage in banter.

[TangyToms]

Also a big Kate Hoey fan.

[pallisers]

I think of Claig as a PhD student in Moscow doing a bit of covert ops on the side. I bet she had a lot of fun with the baking threads leading up to the Trump/brexit thing. Definitely a deliberately-placed influencer/ disrupter. Probably the russians but who knows? Maybe she was employed by the Torys?

[mathanxiety]

She was on MN for many years, to the best of my recollection - it wasn't a case of a quick establishment of a persona on a few baking threads.

And a lot of what she posted on political threads was bonkers, by which I don't mean 'opinions I disagreed with'.

More 'pious fool' than 'tool'.

[Helmetbymidnight]

i sometimes thought claig was my dad!

they shared many crazy thoughts. my dad said he was 'a ukip communist': very anti-bureaucracy, anti-'political class', thought everyones opinion was equal - (which is actually charming in RL) but would never ever listen to science/research/specialists.
clever but never 'studied' anything. inconsistent, passionate, incredibly thick-skinned.

so no, i dont think claig was a troll or paid, there are alarmingly lots of people out there like that (in Essex)

[AlunWynsKnee]

Yes math Claig was around for years iirc. I'd forgotten the pro-Corbyn stuff though.

[SwedishEdith]

I had a very quick look and they posted a lot on education threads. Were about mid-50s, I'd say my age

"Great stuff".

[53rdWay]

What worried me about Claig was how s/he got so many awful things left up on threads by having some kind of Eccentric Weirdo pass. I remember challenging her (her?) praising Putin once by saying, hang on though, Putin has journalists killed, and shrugged it off with something about how the media aren’t harmless. Meanwhile half the thread’s still going “oh Claig, you hilarious scamp!”

Could never work out if isitmebut actually did work for CCHQ or just really, really wanted to. Betting on the second though.