This is something we should have addressed a long time ago, but we always assumed Eeyores were smart enough to spot trolls on their own.

Trolls come in a wide variety, but the most frequent ones we find lurking here are “concern trolls”, which are loosely defined for our purposes as trolls who come to sites like this and outwardly feign support for Hillary Clinton or John McCain, but really have a pro-Obama agenda to demoralize you. We’re not aware of these critters existing in 2004, so they seem to be a new phenomenon of astroturfing (or, Axelrod turfing, if you will).

We have no idea who these people are in real life, but we imagine they are ugly.

And dateless.

We completely ignore them here — but Eeyores we know, surprisingly, actually read the comments the concern trolls leave and wonder if any of it is true.  Of course it’s not — the trolls come here to breed Eeyores in our midst, and spread rain clouds far and wide. For some reason, these people always remind us of Rumpelstiltskin, malicious and gnarled, lurking in the dark, popping up here and there, belching and farting while trying to get people to kill themselves so they can gnaw on their bones.

Extra drama in the coffee this morning!

We could name the worst trolls we see here, but unlike Rumpelstiltskin, naming these trolls doesn’t banish them to the phantom zone: because they revel in attention and power. You can figure out for yourself who they are — because they all read from the Axelrod astroturfing playbook, if not work for the Obama campaign itself.

They’ll say things like, “Well, McCain did have a surge in the polls and he is a good candidate, but now Zogby and Rasmussen say this race is over because Obama is so far ahead.” Their MO is to try to stike some psychological affinity with you, agreeing on some point, before casting an Eeyore spell over your gullible self and bringing you down with troll lies. Their hope is to spook Eeyores to stampede, and call or email all of their friends in panic. “Trolls told me we should give up and I listened because the trolls said it and I read what they said and now I need my dydee changed because I am the world’s most gullible 45-year old!”. And your Doorman or whoever is staring back at you wishes he never met an Eeyore such as yourself. Enough with the pants wetting over things trolls tell you.

And, if you haven’t figured this out by now, you deserve to be called stupid by us, because the biggest concern trolls OF THEM ALL are the mainstream media. The biggest Eeyores we know park themselves in front of MSNBC and wail and cry throughout the day, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair, despondent the concern trolls on the Obama propaganda channel keep telling them to SURRENDER! because “all hope is lost, you can’t possibly win”. MSNBC tells Eeyores there is nothing any of us can do to stop Obama’s socialist paradise from arriving: the Age of Obama has begun!

And Eeyores collapse into puddles of tears and pee, sucking their hooves in fetal positions, burbling and babbling “Doomed! Doomed! Doomed!”.

It really is this ridiculous, people.

And the harder the trolls work to breed you Eeyores, the more we’re certain of John McCain and Sarah Palin’s win — because trolls wouldn’t be working this hard if they really thought they had it in the bag. The media would not be trying to manufacture rain clouds for Eeyores to wallow in if they really believe Obama was winning this. Why bother if you have this sewn up?

They are going to do what they did to Clinton supporters during the primaries: they will clobber you hard with Eeyore-inducing, concern troll logic the next few days in massive efforts to depress John McCain’s votes. Eeyores will email all of the troll logic around, spreading it — completely oblivious to the fact that this is exactly what trolls want you to do.

We have a good friend named Astrid who we love dearly but who is the absolute worst at this — we had to tell her yesterday that we never read anything she sends us because it’s all troll logic and Eeyore chow. We scan the first line of whatever email she sends, and if we see the slightest bit of concern troll in there, POOF!, into the recycle bin it goes. We have no idea what Astrid’s deal is with this or why she insists on spreading the lies she reads on MSNBC.com — but she’s a stubborn Eeyore who doesn’t see how much damage she does by forwarding troll polls or media lies around.

We repeat ourselves around here because we still haven’t found a way to get through to Eeyores like this, but you really need to stop spreading what you read in the media around to people. If you really want McCain/Palin to win, then spread only the articles you find that cut through the troll logic and media lies and inspire people to work harder for that win. Forward what you read on HillBuzz to people, because what we post is 100% troll logic free. We are a safe zone and won’t ever spread any of that raincloud media nonsense.

We’ve already told Astrid that after this election we’re having a long talk with her about changes she needs to make going forward – because life’s too short to depress people around you needlessly or hurt the causes you believe in by being so negative. Everything you want to communicate can be parsed in a positive way. Instead of telling people “This is so terrible!” or “Why aren’t they doing this?”, you need to manage your message and say, “Here’s an idea that can make this better” or “How about we try this?”. That might be silly to some of you out there, but you set a psychological tone with everything you do — and when people are stressed and the stakes are high, if you’re someone who brings people’s spirits down, and that’s not your intent, you need to change the way you communicate whatever it is you want to say. The concern trolls aspire to bring people down and deflate them. But, Eeyores don’t intend to do that, even though that’s what happens. We know Astrid means well — but she’s worth about 20 concern trolls sometimes.

Be mindful that we have just a few days left in what, for some of us, has been a 2 year long adventure in our lives. We’re confident of a win for McCain/Palin next Tuesday, but we need to stay strong together to weather a few more days of troll attacks and Eeyore rain storms — and make sure we get as many people to go out and vote for McCain/Palin as possible. Get people pumped up — don’t help the trolls bring them down.