Why are people always picking on sock puppets. We give so much and never ask for anything in return. Imagine how much less exciting a child's life would be if they didn't have sock puppets. We are people too, stand up brothers and fight against discrimination!
Move along citizen, nothing to see here.
What's a sock puppet? I'm serious, I've never heard the term except for when we made them in preschool.
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A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks with or about himself or herself, pretending to be a different person, like a ventriloquist 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 (sometimes termed an "alt" which is short for alternate, as in alternate identity) is the pretense that the puppet is a third party who is not affiliated with the puppeteer or acting under their control for their benefit.
The earliest known usage of the term was on July 9, 1993 by Dana Rollins in a posting to bit.listserv.fnord-l, but the term was not in common usage in USENET groups until 1996.
