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...

[53rdWay]

Claig shrugged it off, that is. Very much expressed the view that killing journalists was not that bad.

[ContinuityError]

Whenever I read a claig post I had a mental image of someone with shiny eyes and a tambourine - he/she/it seemed evangelical in
admiration of Trump. There were some quite unpleasant hangers on as well.

[TheHeathenOfSuburbia]

I'm pretty sure claig is/was just one person, her posting voice was quite, er, distinctive.

And her debating position had a sort of bonkers internal logic, if you start from her basic positions; that everything in the Mail is gospel truth, and that the world is run by a conspiracy of The Elite (whose endgame she sadly never saw fit to reveal)

[MetroToy]

Claig is (was?) definitely male. Can't others see masculine tone in posts?

I'm always reading posts and know if it's actually a male pretending to be, or happy to be incorrectly assumed, a female.

[MrPan]

I think she was one person too.

Very 'populist', a Farage/UKIP admirerer - constantly quoting sticking it up to the metropolitan elite bollocks. I thought she was quite lonely and unhinged.

[Helmetbymidnight]

i was sure claig was a he too.

[AlbertWinestein]

I always thought she was a woman and even had a “Claig voice” for her in my mind when I read their posts. This was well before she/he went completely bonkers in the run up to the Trump election, where my Claig voice got more and more hysterical and high pitched the more they posted

[RedToothBrush]

Claig hated me.

They amused me.

I think they were just genuinely like that.

They would have got much for their money if they were on a payroll of some organisation. Not from the length of their posts.

When even I'm going 'fuck reading that wall of text', your effectiveness as a bit is a bit questionable.

[SaskiaRembrandt]

I gave far more thought to this than I probably should have done, and came to the the conclusion Claig was actually Vladimir Putin. I know he has trollfarms to do his trolling for him, but I suspect that now and gain he likes to give his victims the personal touch.

[ContinuityError]

Or even “teh personal touch”.

[SisterMichael]

I thought Putin didn’t speak English?

Obviously that’s the no 1 reason for him not being Claig.

[RedToothBrush]

I thought Putin can speak other languages (Inc English) but doesn't like to speak them or people to think he can.

[LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD]

He can but just chooses not to.

[53rdWay]

I’m sure he can, didn’t he work for the KGB during the Cold War? was valuable prep for AIBU

[SisterMichael]

Interesting, I didn’t know that Red.

[SisterMichael]

53rd

Do you think every once in a while he suggested Vladimir on the baby names board?

[Mizzling]

I was wondering about Claig just the other day, having engaged in many grim discussions with them in 2016. From what I could see they started posting around 2014: a couple of questions about 11plus/grammar schools etc, some pro-Russia stuff on the Ukraine, then a lot of pro-UKIP stuff, followed by Brexit followed by Trump. It was a very distinctive voice, except in the last few months towards the end when the style seemed to fluctuate a bit before the final implosion. The number of posts amounted to more than a full time job. I would very be surprised if they were not doing it on someone’s payroll. Would love to know the truth though. Presumably all their posts were deleted when they were banned?

[Mizzling]

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!”

Yes, this. Actually, by 2019 social media standards it’s kind of par for the course sadly, but at the time it was pretty grotesque and shocking.

[mathanxiety]

"Great stuff"


Kinda miss old Claig now...


I think she did live in Essex actually.

MetroTo Wed 10-Apr-19 12:57:29
Claig is (was?) definitely male. Can't others see masculine tone in posts?

Speaking as someone who was often accused of being male here, I am going to challenge that. On some threads I consciously edited just to see how soon someone called me 'he/she'. Editing involved weeding out 'I feel' and 'I think' statements and a few more tweaks. Claig came across to me as categorical but not well educated, and female.

I suspected what a PP did - quite a solitary older woman who was used to making categorical statements, perhaps to her cats, and never having to argue her corner, who continued in the same vein on MN. Maybe even a little deaf, which can make give and take style conversation difficult. Someone who lived in an echo chamber either real or metaphorical certainly.

[RedRiverShore]

I thought that it was probably a retired person, most likely female who just constantly posted at all hours.

[Hearhere]

I really like Claig I thought it was a bloke, I didn't necessarily agree with his opinions but he was very friendly and rarely got cross

[RedToothBrush]

Claig, could put an argument together and argue it fairly well. Better than a lot of posters who are more educated. That's not to say they weren't full of holes and inconsistency. That's why I found Claig amusing. It was fun to argue with someone who had lots going on inside their opinion.

It was like a proper 'debate' in the old fashioned sense.

It was refreshing from the tedious one line mindless mantras that were so often trotted out.

Whilst I totally disagree with Claig at least there was something I could disagree with.

[twattymctwatterson]

On the subject of Putin, he allegedly dated Wendi Deng for a while a few years ago. I don't think she speaks Russian so I imagine he does speak some English.

[PerkingFaintly]

Talking of Wendi Deng's partners, claig spammed the big threads about phonehacking / News of the World with his/her usual torrent of "elite/PPS/conspiracy waah Murdoch is my hero".

At the time I thought common or garden conspiracy theorist, verging into the rather unwell at times. Stupidly, I'd never contemplated there were such things as dedicated, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns on UK social media.

Now I don't know what to think about claig. S/he was certainly prolific, and IIRC impervious to insults. I also saw claig play together with an obvious pro-Brexit troll – but it could be that the troll was just taking him/her as it found him/her.

[PerkingFaintly]

BTW, posting on "normal" topics is common among Russian trollfarms on social media. Some of the long-running trolls establish a "normal" identity with general social chitchat – sleb, cooking, sports team, whatever. Then they pop up with the given political message for special events (election, aeroplane being shot down, civil unrest), and revert to normal social afterwards.

Alternatively, they build an audience (sometimes targetted) and over time slowly crank their content towards a given viewpoint.