Regarding seeking advice before doing anything with the video, it is possible they had an "expert" friend (the quotations are sarcastic). People who say they are experts are a dime a dozen, real experts are a little harder to find. It's doubtful a real expert is anywhere near where they live. They would have approached their search for expertise from the viewpoint of people who probably knew next to nothing and probably located a guy who can format a Windows XP computer.
Yes, but you don't have to be a Mitnick or a Stallman to know that putting sensitive info on the internet means losing control of it forever. Even Mr. or Ms. Windows XP would have a clue about that; after all, this sort of thing crops up in the mainstream media from time to time. I also disagree with your suggestion that people who really know what they're talking about don't live in places like Dixon, but the whole "maybe the crack videographers sought advice" thing is all just conjecture on my part.
Interestingly (at least to me), just before all this came out in the press, around the time that Ford was reported being intoxicated in public the first time, I happened to read a message in some forum from a guy who claimed to know there was much worse out there and that it would be revealed soon. The other people either ignored him or told him he was full of it. This tells me there was at least one person out there trying to warn people of Ford's behaviour online but was too afraid to come out from behind his handle. Behaviour like Ford's is never private. People must have seen him, sold drugs to him, did drugs with him or had friends who did long before this story ever became public.
No doubt!
There may be, as you say, some people out there just trying to feel like they are part of the story, but I call you back to my assertion that the goonies.bugs3.com site was up and running well before this guy ever went to Vice. Do you believe a troll set the file hosting space up just to fool them - months before going to Vice?
No - but that's not necessary for the troll narrative to work.
Or, do you think he just happened on this URL?
Quite possible, if you're
looking for something which sounds right, perhaps running a few such searches with a short list of keywords related to the people who you want to mpersonate.
It seems the latter is quite fantastic as there are dozens of these hosting services and unless you signed up for each and every one of them, you might not know how they structured the URL for an account. I've not heard of bugs3.com before today and to think some troll who spends his time in forums playing bigshot could pull that off just doesn't add up to me.
You don't need to know the URL structure; see above.
To further add to the mystery is the fact that the domain for bugs3.com was registered by domains by proxy - a service which offers anonymity. This service would appeal to people like the goonies as they may erroneously believe that their activity was also anonymous. A quick search shows it's full of spam and phishing sites, not exactly a reputable business.
Hang on - so are they internet babes-in-arms, or are they bashing out a quick whois with their left hand while waving an illegally imported handgun with their right?
Adding it all up, I'm inclined to believe that the source of the vice article was not the troll unless he is so desperate for attention that he set this up the very moment Gawker published the crack video story.
The troll doesn't need to have set anything up; just happened upon one or two useful props, and then faked some screenshots and emails. In any case, that's what trolls are: desperate for attention and the validation of manipulating others. Based on detrimental things I've seen online, I have no trouble whatsoever believing that there are people out there would would take great pride & joy in setting up and feeding a fake story to Vice (or whoever).
I don't want to come off as argumentative or a thread-derailer, honest! It's just that I still haven't seen
anything which lends any legitimacy to this story; all the so-called proof can be easily dismissed by anyone with a working knowledge of IT. There are so many real or potentially real threads to the Rob Ford Ongoing Megacatastrophe Epic Story that I don't think we should waste time on false leads, and this - to me - is one.
In the interests of not derailing or being a negative influence on the tone of the thread, I'm leaving this topic as-is unless some exciting new development comes up to show me that I was wrong. I apologise in advance if that happens, and just generally for taking us on a tangent. I enjoy your writing and analysis, even if I don't agree 100% with all of it.
