How to tell an alt? There's a lot of ways. But before I explain them, I guess there might be some people who don't know what an "alt" is. It's slang for alternate account. What are they made for? It gives an advantage over the users who only made one. People using alts often thumb themself up from them, so it appears that someone agrees with them, or cheat the contests. Thumbing yourself up from 10 accounts in the caption contest, or rating your own media 5 stars from multiple alts - those are typical douche bag strategies. It's especially visible in my Blogs section, where people obsessed with me make new accounts to attack me and later are surprised when I prove it's them.

After reading my brilliant blog, you'll be able to tell alts too.

The important thing about choosing the right inspector tools is figuring out what type of troll we deal with and what would they need the alts for.

Feature whore troll

You probably noticed how some people upload old crappy re-posts from other humor websites and they get to highest rated very soon. They have... four 5star ratings in 3 minutes? Who rated them so fast? There's an easy way to tell. Use the elinks trick I explained in one of my earlier blogs. Now that you have the user names displayed, you know they 5starred themselves with alts.

Examples of people cought this way: TheNaxx, MemphisT56, SeanReevesDude

Blog section drama queen troll

This species usually uses their alts to thumb down their enemies and thumb up all in their camp. 10 thumbs up? Did they use the thumb glitch? No, they are to stupid to figure it out. How can you tell that? Use another trick, the one listing who thumbed the comment, listed by their IP.

Examples of people caught this way: Rednote67, Letemdangle, Tyaeda

Trying to fit in too much troll

People own them and they are humiliated? They make another account to try their luck again. At the same time, the first thing they'll do is 1star their enemies from their new account. Using the elinks trick works great here. But there's another, easier way. Start a comment battle with them, and thumb yourself up and them down. They'll most likely get on their alts and thumb you down. Make sure you reply as soon as possible. It's a common mistake to make a comment reply from an alt when you have to switch between browsers to thumb up your comments. That's the most common mistake users make when doing the thumb battles and commenting simultaneously.

Examples of people caught this way: Trizza4show, Rin, Byrneone

Feature chat trolls

The regulars have the most alts. Some used for fun, some to troll, some for thumbing. The thing about this kind of users is, you can easily spot some mannerisms. Especially with the foreign users. Since I deal with people of many nationalities every day, I have discovered many significant quirks people from certain regions display. For example, a fellow musician from Norway who has a magnificent Aussie accent would still say "skin jacket" instead of "leather jacket" (probably because leather and skin translate the same way in Norwegian). A girl from Ukraine makes a peculiar mistake every time - instead of saying "I studied at (school name)" she kept using "I studied in (school name)." In her country they probably use "in" and "at" as synonyms. But there's more things like that you can observe. Uncanny punctuation, like the French use, misspelling a word in a weird way, using a catchphrase nobody else understands - those are typical mistakes made by foreigners. As for the people from English-speaking countries, there's still a lot of mistakes they make. Especially the dyslexic and people who like to use certain comebacks. Surprisingly, it's usually an American's alt that gets picked up by observation

Examples of people caught this way: RJM, Bakerxderek, DocH

You're welcome, guys!