APE screenshots: this is how they play to win

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congrats, or something, Arlington!

Next was a thread titled, "APE screenshots: this is how they play to win" and posted in the "VA Public Schools other than FCPS" forum. "APE" is "Arlington Parents for Education" and is an educational advocacy group that prominently, and often controversially, lobbies the Arlington Public Schools (APS) on various issues. The group has a number of detractors and there is sort of a cottage industry of posters starting DCUM threads to complain about things posted in the APE Facebook group. In this case, while it wasn't immediately clear to me, the original poster is complaining about posts in another Facebook group, one belonging to Alexandria parents. Just to be clear, Alexandria is not part of the Arlington Public Schools system. The original poster linked to two screenshots that she had made of posts in the Alexandria forum. The posts were from someone associated with APE and in one the author discussed a proposed cell phone policy that is currently under discussion within APS. The APE representative asked members of the group to submit responses to a survey being conducted by Arlington Public Schools. The original poster considers this to be encouraging outside influence on an issue local to APS and roughly equivalent to former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump soliciting election interference from Russia. Put simply, the APE representative is accused of basically saying, "Alexandria, if you're listening, I hope you are able to game our survey." Some of those responding in the thread are happy to have outside assistance. Others are quite appalled and if, like Trump, APE could be impeached they would surely support it. Instead they settle for demanding that APS no longer have dealings with APE. A lot of the discussion in this thread deals with attitudes towards the proposed cell phone ban which could prohibit phones for the entire school day or for most of the day — that is what is being discussed. Posters whose position is closer to APE's are less concerned about the input from Alexandrians. Others, however, consider APE to be a right-wing association and call anyone supporting the group "MAGAs" and "Trump supporters". There were repeated attempts to divorce cell phone policy from the issue of APE soliciting outside support, but those were mostly unsuccessful. Because the original poster framed this topic as a matter of ethics, I am compelled to point out her dalliance with sock puppeting. I removed one of the original links because the original poster had not redacted the name of one participant in the conversation. The original poster later reposted a redacted version in the thread. But she then replied to her own post saying, "Oh wow wow WOW. I admit that I was a bit confused before at all of the comments, but that link changes everything!" Obviously, the original poster had not been confused and the link didn't change anything as far as she was concerned. As if this wasn't enough, the original poster followed up with another sock puppeted post thanking herself for posting and claiming to have been newly converted by the screenshot. As for APE, one of its board members posted saying that the original post that caused this controversy had been poorly worded and not meant to say what everyone thought that it did. Moreover, the board member strongly agreed that only Arlington residents should participate in the survey. I don't have a dog in this fight either way, but I do suggest an alternative to APE named "Sockpuppets Imitating Anybody", or SIMIAN.

Nothing gets Arlingtonians going like APE. I don't like APE at all. I could go on and on about why. So I guess OP sock puppeted but they also weren't the only one posting in this thread. I know this because I am not OP and I also commented on this thread. I found it both disturbing that APE is gaming APS surveys. But also these people create their own train wrecks and no I can't look away.

The funniest thing about this whole thing may be the APE board member's super quick response (confirming that APE spends a lot of time on DCUM) and their lame attempt to excuse the poster. We are to fall for the excuse that it was poorly worded and not meant to say EXACTLY WHAT SHE SAID IT MEANT?! How gullible does APE think we are?

Yes, that was also misleading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know the individual who posted in the Alexandria group. She is truly an incredibly nice and wonderful person. Shame on any of you calling her names. You have zero clue about her true intent. I don’t think there was any big or nefarious plan. She lived in Alexandria at one point and has friends there. Perhaps some of them are in the Alexandria group. I know I share things with friends so maybe she thought that’s all she was doing? I am sure all of us have friends who post things on their FB pages to vote in polls —. “Please vote for Ms. Smith for teacher of the year - you know how good she is for my little Timmy!” I can see how the rabid anti-APE folks would grasp at this since it’s not the best look but c’mon it’s really not the end of the world. Yes she is passionate about this issue. Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, she has seen how damaging devices can be to someone close to her? I am mad that anyone is judging her on her right to advocate on this issue. And before someone calls out that I am APE I will confirm that I am, indeed, in APE but I am not speaking for APE. I am just a friend who saw her friend being unfairly attacked and I had to speak up.

I guess you've missed her unhinged comments attacking others on AEM.

She has a lot of passion for something she doesn't understand - her kids are very young.

This whole thread is all of the negative energy that she put out in the community coming back to bite her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aww… did you delete your AEM post?

Or did the group owner delete it? I was just reading comments there when it disappeared.

Sus.

I bet the APE poster complained and got it removed. Very on brand for APE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hahaha I hope Jeff bans you, sock puppet.

This whole thing is such a red herring and obviously some kind of personal vendetta the OP has. In her own words, responding to her own post, Jeff tells us: “Oh wow wow WOW. I admit that I was a bit confused before at all of the comments, but that link changes everything!"

It changes nothing. Maybe we can actually talk about real issues facing APS one day.

Huh? This actually happened.

It's good that OP started this thread to spread awareness of deceptive tactics that APE will use to further their cause.

+1. TY to OP. And no I am not OP!!! No way I would have ever known about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know the individual who posted in the Alexandria group. She is truly an incredibly nice and wonderful person. Shame on any of you calling her names. You have zero clue about her true intent. I don’t think there was any big or nefarious plan. She lived in Alexandria at one point and has friends there. Perhaps some of them are in the Alexandria group. I know I share things with friends so maybe she thought that’s all she was doing? I am sure all of us have friends who post things on their FB pages to vote in polls —. “Please vote for Ms. Smith for teacher of the year - you know how good she is for my little Timmy!” I can see how the rabid anti-APE folks would grasp at this since it’s not the best look but c’mon it’s really not the end of the world. Yes she is passionate about this issue. Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, she has seen how damaging devices can be to someone close to her? I am mad that anyone is judging her on her right to advocate on this issue. And before someone calls out that I am APE I will confirm that I am, indeed, in APE but I am not speaking for APE. I am just a friend who saw her friend being unfairly attacked and I had to speak up.

I guess you've missed her unhinged comments attacking others on AEM.

She has a lot of passion for something she doesn't understand - her kids are very young.

This whole thread is all of the negative energy that she put out in the community coming back to bite her.

Why does she think she gets to tell APS what to do for high schoolers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OOP again. Admin Jeff just wrote up an account of this thread in the "most commented" daily post, and accused me of being a sock puppet. And I'm going to do something that APE can't do:

ADMIT IT!

Yes! I respond to myself to drive discussion! Especially on threads that I start! I don't particularly feel sorry for it, but I don't think my troll tendencies are on the same level as someone going to other districts' online forums to solicit public comment to drive their group's own self-serving advocacy either.

While distrusting of their motives, I am rather indifferent to APE and their members themselves. They advocate for things I don't particularly care about. Including cellphone policy. Yes, I want them out of classrooms like everyone else, but I don't particularly care if 16 year olds want to pull them out at lunch or between classes.

While I wasn't expecting Jeff to call me out, I'm glad he did. APS can definitely track IP addresses just as Jeff did to me. Probably really easily. And maybe while they would be cautious about discounting anyone's opinion in the DMV, it would be curious how many comments they get from rando places too.

So mea culpa, beeches.

Oh, honey. SMH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hahaha I hope Jeff bans you, sock puppet.

This whole thing is such a red herring and obviously some kind of personal vendetta the OP has. In her own words, responding to her own post, Jeff tells us: “Oh wow wow WOW. I admit that I was a bit confused before at all of the comments, but that link changes everything!"

It changes nothing. Maybe we can actually talk about real issues facing APS one day.

Huh? This actually happened.

It's good that OP started this thread to spread awareness of deceptive tactics that APE will use to further their cause.

+1. TY to OP. And no I am not OP!!! No way I would have ever known about this.

I guess we'll never know for sure.

[Anonymous]

Oh, don’t pretend you’re some Bastion of purity on anonymous comment boards, sock puppeting and insulting each other. I’m convinced that it’s the same 3 people talking past each other.

Doesn’t erase the fact that someone went to another division’s advocacy fb group to get them to comment officially on APS policy. That’s what’s really cringe. Screenshots live forever.

I didn’t see the AEM post, that’s a shame. I hope it was fun while it lasted.

[Anonymous]

OOP: and I’d like to correct Jeff on one point. These were not my screenshots. They were posted by someone else elsewhere. They forgot to cross out a name. It was not the name of the perpetrator, but the Alexandria parent the APE parent responded to. So I really didn’t know the name of the APE person just by reading the screenshot. Though by reading the thread, it’s pretty obvious who it is. The original link still exists on Imgur if anyone wants to confirm.

I did re-edit the screenshot again to post on Imgur so it could be reposted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, don’t pretend you’re some Bastion of purity on anonymous comment boards, sock puppeting and insulting each other. I’m convinced that it’s the same 3 people talking past each other.

Doesn’t erase the fact that someone went to another division’s advocacy fb group to get them to comment officially on APS policy. That’s what’s really cringe. Screenshots live forever.

I didn’t see the AEM post, that’s a shame. I hope it was fun while it lasted.

Odd how the AEM mod deleted this one quickly but left up that horrible post about the APS teacher for days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OOP: and I’d like to correct Jeff on one point. These were not my screenshots. They were posted by someone else elsewhere. They forgot to cross out a name. It was not the name of the perpetrator, but the Alexandria parent the APE parent responded to. So I really didn’t know the name of the APE person just by reading the screenshot. Though by reading the thread, it’s pretty obvious who it is. The original link still exists on Imgur if anyone wants to confirm.

I did re-edit the screenshot again to post on Imgur so it could be reposted.

Sweetie, it’s time to take a day off. How embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OOP: and I’d like to correct Jeff on one point. These were not my screenshots. They were posted by someone else elsewhere. They forgot to cross out a name. It was not the name of the perpetrator, but the Alexandria parent the APE parent responded to. So I really didn’t know the name of the APE person just by reading the screenshot. Though by reading the thread, it’s pretty obvious who it is. The original link still exists on Imgur if anyone wants to confirm.

I did re-edit the screenshot again to post on Imgur so it could be reposted.

Sweetie, it’s time to take a day off. How embarrassing.

APE and their volunteer are the ones who should be embarrassed, but go on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OOP: and I’d like to correct Jeff on one point. These were not my screenshots. They were posted by someone else elsewhere. They forgot to cross out a name. It was not the name of the perpetrator, but the Alexandria parent the APE parent responded to. So I really didn’t know the name of the APE person just by reading the screenshot. Though by reading the thread, it’s pretty obvious who it is. The original link still exists on Imgur if anyone wants to confirm.

I did re-edit the screenshot again to post on Imgur so it could be reposted.

Sweetie, it’s time to take a day off. How embarrassing.

APE and their volunteer are the ones who should be embarrassed, but go on.

No really, you’ve been caught. There’s no steering the conversation back now. (And the more you try, the more pathetic you look.)

-Someone who thinks high schoolers should have access to their phones during the school day

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OOP: and I’d like to correct Jeff on one point. These were not my screenshots. They were posted by someone else elsewhere. They forgot to cross out a name. It was not the name of the perpetrator, but the Alexandria parent the APE parent responded to. So I really didn’t know the name of the APE person just by reading the screenshot. Though by reading the thread, it’s pretty obvious who it is. The original link still exists on Imgur if anyone wants to confirm.

I did re-edit the screenshot again to post on Imgur so it could be reposted.

Sweetie, it’s time to take a day off. How embarrassing.

APE and their volunteer are the ones who should be embarrassed, but go on.

No really, you’ve been caught. There’s no steering the conversation back now. (And the more you try, the more pathetic you look.)

-Someone who thinks high schoolers should have access to their phones during the school day

Y'all found your scapegoat. Congratulations. APE can't walk back from this either. It's all in the screenshots. Sounds like they're sending the most recent link to their friends and family too.

The real conversation is about how our surveys are being manipulated. An APE representative was caught doing it. Who knows if others do it too. I personally wouldn't think to send it to my mom, but okay. APS should secure the surveys, particularly for those that influence policy decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OOP: and I’d like to correct Jeff on one point. These were not my screenshots. They were posted by someone else elsewhere. They forgot to cross out a name. It was not the name of the perpetrator, but the Alexandria parent the APE parent responded to. So I really didn’t know the name of the APE person just by reading the screenshot. Though by reading the thread, it’s pretty obvious who it is. The original link still exists on Imgur if anyone wants to confirm.

I did re-edit the screenshot again to post on Imgur so it could be reposted.

Sweetie, it’s time to take a day off. How embarrassing.

APE and their volunteer are the ones who should be embarrassed, but go on.

No really, you’ve been caught. There’s no steering the conversation back now. (And the more you try, the more pathetic you look.)

-Someone who thinks high schoolers should have access to their phones during the school day

Y'all found your scapegoat. Congratulations. APE can't walk back from this either. It's all in the screenshots. Sounds like they're sending the most recent link to their friends and family too.

The real conversation is about how our surveys are being manipulated. An APE representative was caught doing it. Who knows if others do it too. I personally wouldn't think to send it to my mom, but okay. APS should secure the surveys, particularly for those that influence policy decisions.

It sounds like APE is being shady (shocker), but your obsession and willingness to stay on DCUM all day after Jeff called you out for sock puppeting is freaking weird.

And it’s so obvious who you are because you do the same thing on AEM when anyone mentions being pro cell phone ban.

Seriously it’s weird AF.