Update (3/30): Yeah, right.

I try to avoid blog feuds like Black Death, but I became so intrigued, I decided to blog about it.

Someone calling “herself” Amanda Chapel started a blog called Strumpette. This person started off on the wrong stiletto by going after, in a very trite manner, Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion. Rubel briefly blogged about it here.

An excerpt from Strumpette’s inaugural post:

I happen to eavesdrop in on a conversation on the shop floor down at the “image factory” last week. About six of our young chicks were sitting around the lunch table cackling. The topic of course was clients… and boys. The chit chat touched on “March Madness” and oddly turned to Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion fame. Well, turns out there is a hot office pool presently and it’s not the Final Four; it’s how long Rubel will last at Edelman. How totally catty… but how absolutely fun! Apparently, it’s not limited to our office. It’s ended up inboxes throughout our network globally.

The first thing that made me suspicious is the word catty. Most women I know consider the word catty a pejorative and wouldn’t use it. The person uses a variation in this post. Along with other negative things, “she” uses the word catfight. This has a somewhat vulgar connotation, and women typically don’t use it, at least not in the presence of men. Perhaps this holds true only in my small circle of women friends; perhaps it’s universal.

Bottom-line: Strumpette went after Rubel as link-bait (very effectively), and e-mailed well-known PR bloggers about this supposed office pool. And it worked. The person received the attention he/she was after.

Enter Mike Krempasky. Mike is a fellow political conservative I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Although I knew he worked in PR, I didn’t know he was acquainted with business bloggers. I was pleased to learn about his detective work on this Strumpette character. This is what Mike turned up:

The “Strumpette” = Brian Connolly? I think so. At the VERY least, someone at the Literati Group has some ’splaining to do.

(let me say, first - I don’t have a particular problem with the Strumpette. It’s marginally funny, and acts like a stripper in a nursing home, which is always due to stir things up. But Wonkette it’s not.)

First, on the Strumpette. Netcraft tells us this: Nameserver Organisation Literati Group, 111 East Chestnut, 30G, Chicago, 60611, United States

Ok, interesting but not significant.

The privacy policy on Strumpette is, however.

You simply must read the rest. Mike suspects Strumpette is a man named Brian Connolly, who commented on Mike’s post, a misplayed hand for someone trying to run a fake blog. Mike writes:

Oddly, both ‘Brian’ and ‘Amanda’ display the rather rare writing characteristic of signing their comments in addition to the clearly displayed ‘authored by’ field.

Intrigued, or probably just bored with politics, I did some detective work of my own. At this point I must disclose something: I “ghost blog” for one client. I blog under someone else’s name. It’s a rather sedate, non-PR kind of business, and the client also blogs. I consider myself a content provider and distinguish myself from folks like Strumpette because I don’t create phony blogs and use phony names to run badly-conceived viral marketing campaigns.

That’s out of the way. Now, on to my findings.

1) When people pretend to be someone else, there are certain characteristics they can’t conceal unless they make a strenuous effort to do so consistently. They tend to use the same or a similar style of writing, often using the same words and sentence structure. For instance, in one of Connolly’s comments on Mike’s blog, he writes:

Truth is, I have my own suspicions of the identity of your Strumpette. However, I do not know. But if I did, I surely would not tell you.

Sincerely,

Brian Connolly

In “her” current post, Strumpette writes:

But your Strumpette has gotten feedback far more dear.

Notice the usage of “your Strumpette.” Appending your to the subject is not something people normally do when they know the person they’re addressing isn’t acquainted with the person they’re referring to. Connolly slipped up here. Also notice the cadence of Connolly’s and Strumpette’s sentences. They “sound” similar.

2) Additionally, in the posts and comments, Strumpette uses the word surely several times. In Mike’s comment section, Connolly used the word surely in both comments. That’s not a coincidence; it’s a tic, an unconscious quirk. We all have them. On my political blog, I use the phrase, “by the way” quite frequently. Pretending to be someone else, I’d avoid the phrase.

It’s probably how handwriting experts can tell whether an individual wrote something. They compare the way a person writes certain letters and uses certain words and phrases.

That’s all I want to add to the discussion for now. If Strumpette doesn’t delete “her” blog, I’ll look for more tics later.

Addendum: According to the chatter, Brian Connolly of Literati Group isn’t Strumpette. Maybe not, but whoever this character is, he/she is probably the same person, based on those tics. Come clean, whoever you are!

Other bloggers: Media Orchard, Adrants, B.L Ochman (as blunt as ever!), Usher Blogs, infOpinions?, Silicon Valley Watcher…