worcester city hall.jpg

Worcester City Hall.

(Noah R. Bombard | MassLive)

WORCESTER - The furor over a vulgar Facebook post attributed to At-Large City Councilor Michael Gaffney will end, but what happens then? There will almost certainly be more controversial posts, and more accusations of fake accounts. Is this the new norm in politics?

The latest controversy began Monday morning, when a screenshot of a vulgar remark Gaffney made started being shared on social media and email. Gaffney has denied leaving the remark, stating the post was made by a fake account in his name.

Admittedly, Gaffney noted he caused some of the issue because he was responding to another fake account that was mocking him.

That response became a string of responses and, somewhere in the turbulent mass that Facebook can become, the offensive remark was posted, under Gaffney's name, and with his current profile photo.

Gaffney has his defenders, and he has those who are skeptical of his response. He points to the fact that one of the commenters is yet another fake Michael T. Gaffney account which, by his count, is the fourth or fifth fake account he has had to deal with since summer. That's when a fake account sprung up during the mayoral race and frequently posted negative things on the Police Department's Facebook page.

Gaffney does not know if that account, or others that were created during the campaign affected the election, but he does know he had to deal with the immediate consequences.

"People were messaging me about the fake postings," Gaffney said. "I would go on and see people responding to the comments as if it was me. So, some people did buy into this stuff."

And, he noted, it is very easy to do. Generally, photos posted on social media are not copyrighted, and all it takes is one click to download the photo for your own use.

In October former City Councilor Frederick Rushton found himself warning people that a Facebook page seeking connections with his name and photos was a fake. It was one of two times a fake Facebook page was made in his name.

In one case, Rushton for Governor was set up in his name. In another instance, the person imitating Rushton altered his name slightly and began sending out friend requests. Rushton was alerted to the page by Facebook, after several people reported the page.

"Once you clicked on it, you would see that none of my content was there, which apparently a lot of people did," Rushton said.

But Gaffney said Facebook is not always so responsive.

Gaffney noted he attempted to have the account posting to the police page, which misspelled his name, shut down. A similar thing happened with other pages, he noted.

"It's almost like being cat-fished," he said, using the term that generally means luring someone into an agreement or relationship by using a fake online persona. "They are stealing my ID to mislead somebody."

Another Facebook account falsely claiming to be Joe Petty was commenting on threads this week. Like the Gaffney post, the posts were laced with vulgarities.

But not all accounts are malicious. At-Large Councilor Konstantina Lukes was the target of one of the city's longest running mock Twitter accounts, which started as "BizarroLukes," a take on the Superman villain Bizzaro, who is the exact opposite of Superman.

That account began in 2011, and its founder, who has remained anonymous, since, describes the account and accompanying blog as satire.

It's owner describes it as "a satirical look at Worcester politics, largely focused on overall absurdity without really picking a consistent side."

"I look at what's going on in Worcester, see something that catches my interest and then write what I hope are funny tweets about it," the blogger wrote in a series od direct Twitter messages. "My scope tends to range from insult comedy to absurdist imagery. I've very rarely delved into more serious assessments, but those are few and far between. My goal is humor first, regardless of whether I hit the mark or not."

Lukes said there is an inherent problem with social media right now. The protocol and cultural rules have yet to catch up to the technology. That makes elected officials easy targets, she said, because it always ends up looking worse for public figures who respond than the original post or comment would have been if left alone.

"The trouble is, they are anonymous," Lukes said. "No one ever has to take accountability for making those statements."

Lukes said she never paid attention, nor does she now, calling what was directed at her as "nonsensical mischief."

"I can call it mischief because it never really affected anything," she said. "In Mike's case, if it was an attempt to deliberately humiliate him, I'd call it something else."

The writer of Bizarro Lukes, though, disagreed.

"Lukes has stated that 'no one is held to a higher standard anymore' in terms of social media, but I think that's only as far as the barrier to entry into broadcasting statements to the world," the blogger wrote. "As far as what we expect of people in power, including anonymous satirists, I'd argue our standards are higher than ever before. Otherwise, I'd never have considered satire in the first place."

But the satirical and what Gaffney is facing may not be comparable. What purportedly was posted in Gaffney's name did not satirize any of Gaffney's stands on issues; though the post Gaffney originally responded to could be seen in that light, mocking his relationship with the Turtleboy Sports blog.

BizarroLukes, which started in 2011, was making fun "of the notion that Konstantina Lukes, who was running for mayor in 2011, actually seemed out of her element running unopposed," its creator wrote. "At the time, I wanted to make fun and without a strong foil to play off of. I thought, 'Why not make someone who's the opposite of Konstantina Lukes?' And so Bizarro Lukes was born. Not a really deep gimmick, but I did what I could to make sure the Bizarro version was at least accurate.

In 2013, however, the account turned away from Lukes and more toward an overall look at Worcester. In a move that may have shocked even Mr. Mytzlplk, BizarroLukes became "BizarroWorcester."

WE WOULD PUT UP A BIZARRO @MGAFFNEYCC ACCOUNT TO CAPITALIZE ON THIS BUT @RICKRUSHTON ALREADY EXISTED. #WORCPOLI — OLOSERF P NHOJ (@BIZARROWORC) February 22, 2016

The Twitter account will target anything Worcester, including the media and the city's culture. The blog points its Bizarro x-ray vision at everything from elections, where it not only profiles, but endorses, candidates, to itself. One recent blog polled reads on whether its all cap-locked style needed to go.

"I'd describe the voice now as an official city account belonging to a Bizarro World version of Worcester," the blogger wrote. "I'm pretty happy about that. It didn't take long before Bizarro Lukes was more a mouthpiece for a broad satire of the council in general, so the official change was long overdue."

Hardly the same as what Lukes describes as a small group of people talking to themselves. Addressing the negative online culture Gaffney is facing, Lukes said it appears to be "a very limited number of playing into that kind of communication."

In that regard, Lukes said it is best to stay clear. She referenced one of her past elections in which an anonymous accusation was leveled against her and she responded. But, the situation only was made worse. So, she said, she decided to ignore it.

"They are all speaking to each other, they are all speaking about each other," Lukes said. "If you are going to get involved with that kind of messy group, you are going to come out with damage to your own psyche.

"You're dealing with an anonymous world," she said, likening anonymous comments to "bloodless warfare."

"The only way you can respond is to up the ante worse than what was originally posted, and that's what they are waiting for," she said. "It becomes this ongoing situation."

Rushton echoed those sentiments, noting he did not respond to the fake Facebook page in his name because "once you do it leads you down the crazy rabbit hole that is the Internet." But he did respond -- as an attorney -- to accusations of criminal activity made on yet a third Facebook account that Rushton said is still operating under a false name.

Rushton, who served 12 years on the council, said parody accounts/publications have always existed. It is only in the past few years, however, that people are essentially adopting others' identities in what he said are attempts to intimidate people.

Rushton said he believes some of the same people who are angry now about the anonymous Gaffney pages -- those who are admitted followers of TurtleBoy Sports -- were responsible for anonymous Facebook pages in the past.

"These are the same tactics they have used to intimidate people for two years," he said. "They don't like it when it happens to them."

Gaffney agreed with Lukes' description of anonymous attacks, particularly the Facebook pages that have targeted him, saying it is "amazing the trolls get extremely vicious, but when you call them out on it, they get offended easily."

But walking away from social media is not an option in today's political world, Gaffney said. Instead, he described it as a double-edged sword.

"I use social media to asset my positions. Those in themselves are controversial," he said. For example, Gaffney said he felt the post he said he really made on Sunday about countries where everything is free requiring mandatory military service was more provocative that the remark that made people mad.

"If you want to know where I stand on an issue, check my page, where I state my issues," he said. "Never mind these comments and anonymous posts. That's where they get you. If you want to know what someone thinks, go to their own page."

That means he is not abandoning Facebook anytime soon.

"I use social media to get my message out. In that sense, it is a double-edged sword. If you are going to use it ... you have to deal with this type of controversy," he said. "Making stuff up is where they go too far."

Ironically, it may be Lukes' avoidance of social media that made her less of a villain in Bizarro Worcester.

"A strange thing happened with Bizarro Lukes," the blogger wrote. "I started to sympathize with Konstantina Lukes in some cases. It was a shocking revelation: politicians are also people. They're under a microscope even at the local level, doing a tough job, and sometimes they make very big mistakes whether it's saying something foolish or something more serious. We expect so much out of politicians that when they do fall from grace, they fall hard.

"This isn't to say politicians don't deserve to be called out on their mistakes. They do," the blogger continued. "However, victims and attackers are in the eye of the beholder. I think Gaffney's statement about his reputation being destroyed probably rallied his detractors as much as his supporters."