I met a young educated foreigner in a chat room who told me he is a paid disinformationist on the internet. | |
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CleverMoniker User ID: 26707174 Canada 02/07/2013 09:00 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: I met a young educated foreigner in a chat room who told me he is a paid disinformationist on the internet. IMO 'The Shill' is by and large a thought-terminating cliche used by weak minded people when they find themselves challenged by critical thinking and superior intellect. Whereas I think it's quite possible that powerful corporations like Monsanto, Oil/Energy companies, etc could employ shills to defend their brand, the range of topics people get called 'shill' on here at this site is far too vast. For example, say you're a Suntard. You think the sun is expanding, or contracting, or not real, or an alien refueling station, or whatever. Someone comes in and argues with you, you call him a shill. Maybe you really believe he is trying to keep you from spreading the truth. Then you go 2 threads over where a guy claims the clerk at Best Buy was a reptilian alien because he touched his face too many times during the transaction or didn't blink enough. You try to reason with him, and immediately he calls you a shill. You know you're not a shill. But he's positive you are, because hey, why else would you be disagreeing with his perfectly rational opinion, right? At this point, it must be occurring to you that maybe the people disagreeing with you, are simply people disagreeing with you. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the theories on this site are self-shilling. Meaning, if you went up to a random person on the street and told him what you think, he's going to look at you like you're nuts, and promptly cross the street. It doesn't make sense, financially or practically, to pay an army of people to go around spreading disinfo against a theory that the Pope is a robot vampire from the 6th dimension, because the average person is never going to take that seriously in the first place. I believe in Corporate shills, but shills for fringe theories? Not so much. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 1551413 United States 02/07/2013 09:05 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: I met a young educated foreigner in a chat room who told me he is a paid disinformationist on the internet. IMO 'The Shill' is by and large a thought-terminating cliche used by weak minded people when they find themselves challenged by critical thinking and superior intellect. Quoting: CleverMoniker 26707174 Whereas I think it's quite possible that powerful corporations like Monsanto, Oil/Energy companies, etc could employ shills to defend their brand, the range of topics people get called 'shill' on here at this site is far too vast. For example, say you're a Suntard. You think the sun is expanding, or contracting, or not real, or an alien refueling station, or whatever. Someone comes in and argues with you, you call him a shill. Maybe you really believe he is trying to keep you from spreading the truth. Then you go 2 threads over where a guy claims the clerk at Best Buy was a reptilian alien because he touched his face too many times during the transaction or didn't blink enough. You try to reason with him, and immediately he calls you a shill. You know you're not a shill. But he's positive you are, because hey, why else would you be disagreeing with his perfectly rational opinion, right? At this point, it must be occurring to you that maybe the people disagreeing with you, are simply people disagreeing with you. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the theories on this site are self-shilling. Meaning, if you went up to a random person on the street and told him what you think, he's going to look at you like you're nuts, and promptly cross the street. It doesn't make sense, financially or practically, to pay an army of people to go around spreading disinfo against a theory that the Pope is a robot vampire from the 6th dimension, because the average person is never going to take that seriously in the first place. I believe in Corporate shills, but shills for fringe theories? Not so much. +5 |