Originally posted by happykat39
And on a conspiracy site such as this one man's troll is another man's intelligent responder.
THAT is very true. What I have seen in these now almost daily "have we been compromised?" threads is that someone is upset that somebody else
doesn't agree with the "norm" on ATS and says so vehemently and articulately. There is a certain mindset on ATS (You could probably do a thesis on
it.) that, if violated, often results in cries of disinformation.
I do not think trolls constitute disinformation. They are disruptive, certainly, but they aren't really very effective because the rest of the
'community' calls them out on it. I don't think people who use ad hominem attacks on people rather than the issue constitute disinformation either.
It's too easy and obvious to spot. That doesn't work either.
A really good disinformation campaign is designed to sow doubt in the community. A good contemporary example is the idea that Osama is not really
dead! And here we get to the crux of the matter. Are all the people pushing this idea and claiming to have insider information disinformation agents?
Absolutely not, and they aren't paid either. They are us.
We ARE the disinformation agents. There's no need for any intervention on the part of secretive government agencies assigned to monitor sites like
ATS. It's just not necessary because the vast bulk of people here will believe just about anything with no proof whatsoever.
It's kind of odd, really. Here we are trashing pretty much ANY source of news. The MSM? Government controlled and spoon feeding us. The blog world?
Anybody can do it. Fox? Faux news! The Naked Weather Channel? Well, maybe I'll have a look. It's like no outlet at all is reliable, therefore any
idea is plausible. ATS is just like the blog world. Anybody can post anything, and they do, raking in stars and flags for the best imagination.
A good example of this is Ulsterman. You may have heard of him in conjunction with the so-called and mysterious "White House Insider." Now it's an
open question whether the Insider actually exists or not and I, myself have gone from "Probably Yes" to "Possibly No" on this over time, But the
gist of it is that this political operative has been an Insider with Obama's election and that he knows of the chaos inside the White House. His
latest is that Obama did NOT make the decision to get Osama and was very undecided and wussy about it. Instead, Panetta, Daly, Clinton, and a few
others managed to stage a sort of "temporary coup" to get the job done. Now the Insider always makes Obama look bad, and that's part of the
territory.
Now either the Insider exists or Ulsterman is concocting a very tight story line that just happens to connect with the facts as we think we know them.
In other words, as a STORY (not saying it's real here) it is a very good and tight conspiracy theory, certainly as good from a contextual standpoint
as anything presented here on ATS. It's right up our alley. If one of us had come up with that stuff it would have been starred and flagged clear
across the page.
How has ATS on the whole reacted? That it is completely bogus. Ulsterman is a shill. The Insider doesn't exist. It's all a fantasy and a not very
good one at that. Yet in almost the same breath we have people assuring us that Osama was killed on five different dates over the last ten years
without a shadow of a doubt, reptilians are real, and several of us just talked with Jesus.
Now, it's a complex site with lots of pieces and points of view, but I would maintain that ATS as a whole is incapable of "denying ignorance," and
that there are no professional paid disinformation agents here because it is simply not necessary, and that we are our own worst enemies.
