Sockpuppet Investigations - Meatpuppet

Meatpuppet

"Meatpuppet" redirects here. For the band, see Meat Puppets.

The term "meatpuppet" (or "meat puppet") is used as a pejorative description of various online behaviors. The term was current before the Internet, including references in Ursula Le Guin's science fiction story "The Diary of the Rose" (1976), the alternative rock band Meat Puppets, and the cyberpunk novelist William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984). Editors of Wikipedia use the term to label contributions of new community members if suspected of having been recruited by an existing member to support their position. Such a recruited member is considered analogous to a sockpuppet even though he is actually a separate individual (i.e. "meat") rather than a fictitious creation. Wired columnist Lore Sjöberg put "meat puppet" first on a satirical list of "common terms used at Wikipedia," defining the term as "a person who disagrees with you."

Nevertheless, other online sources use the term "meatpuppet" to describe sockpuppet behaviors. For example, according to one online encyclopedia, a meat puppet "publishes comments on blogs, wikis and other public venues about some phenomenon or product in order to generate public interest and buzz"—that is, he is engaged in behavior more widely known as "astroturfing." A 2006 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education defined a meat puppet as "a peculiar inhabitant of the digital world—a fictional character that passes for a real person online."