Top signs the one you are arguing with is a propaganda agent…

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I have been on the net since it started. The usenet days was the days where you had true troll armies running around screwing with people just for fun. Then it evolved into the HTML message boards.
I am fully familiar with trolling, and the normal human activities on the net, as I am breathing. As a troll, I trolled with the best of them.

But along the line, I noticed a distinct change in the type of people that made themselves prominent on many forums. It took me years to make sense of it, until I started noticing a long term pattern. The reason for the pattern never made sense to me, until recently when all those people that fell into that pattern started going, or leaning one way in all the argument relating to current world activates. It became obvious at that instant, they were shills following a central command system.

Here is a list of things I have noticed about them over the years.

The true shills fall into two types, paid and unpaid.
You can’t really differentiate between the two types.
Their distinctive actions and habits are the same.

The distinctive traits take on an almost inhuman quality.

It’s apparent they are here strictly to try to influence people.

No mater how much they converse with the daily visitors, their view of the situation never evolves.
Everyone else’s opinion slowly evolves from week to week, but not theirs.

They have an inhuman posting ability.
Do they eat, or sleep?
What do they do for a job?
Do they even have a life outside of the computer?

In that same regard, their post count is relentless from day to day. Almost like they are being paid to make so many posts a day, no mater how stupid they are.

All of the shills appear to get the same talking points at the exact same time. When you see one person at one forum come out with new arguing points, you see other totally unrelated people at other forums all across the net come out with the exact same arguing points. You know all the accounts can’t be the same person because that would account for thousands of posts a day.

They take every day events that happen in the conflict zone that have reasons that are painfully obvious, and try to take them out of context to an asinine degree to support their talking points.

If you post anything that goes against the talking points, they instantly start will name calling, calling you a Retard, stupid, a Nazi, or a Zionist. Or all of the above.

If you use those very same tactics, that they just used, in kind, then they start going after you for being mean, and trying to derail the conversation.

If you won’t go away, they, and all their sock puppets rush to the moderator and try to get you banned.

If the evidence you reference to to disprove their talking points is logically irrefutable and its obvious to them that denying it is pointless, Then they all magically disappear for a few hours, or a day. That gives the thread the chance to roll over one or two pages, then they magically show back up and carry on like you was never there in the first place, spewing the exact thing you disproved beyond a doubt.

It is almost like they have a standing order that if they and their talking points get hit bad enough on a thread they are ordered to remove themselves from the thread in order to get new talking points, or propaganda directives from their handlers.

If people are calling them out on their obvious shilling, then they, and all their sock puppets start accusing everyone else of being shills. And they carry it to the point that it forces the forum moderators to instate a rule banning anyone who calls anyone a shill. Which is the desired result to prevent anyone from calling out their obvious shilling.

And there is always that slow echo that I have always noticed with the propaganda community.

It’s almost like they make notes of arguments that was successfully used against their propaganda, and feed it back to their handlers, which modify the argument to suit their talking points, then feed it back to the propaganda agents that are pounding the forums.

If I use a specific definition, or concept to describe why one of the shills is totally out of his mind…. To the point that it forces the shills on the thread to do a one day reset before they come back and carry on their propaganda distribution….. Then I have noticed that a mutated form of that argument, with that very same key phrase starts flowing from many people on many discussion forums a couple days later. Almost in unison. The people that all of a sudden start using the twisted form of the description I used all across the net is surprising.


And that is just a SHORT list of the obvious characteristics I see the shill community exhibiting.

If you can get past your pre conceived biases, to the point that you can see the repeated patterns.

Once you realize there is a monolithic block that is being controlled by a central figure, and realize exactly how big that block is, then you will truly come to grips with how active the Russian propaganda machine is on the internet.. And how long it’s been active.

Shortly after 911 is when the Russian internet propaganda machine started full tilt.

The reason I noticed the distinct change around that time is I am well experienced at trolling, and am familiar with how normal day to day live people respond. When I started interacting with these specific people, I did not get the normal “human” response I always expected.

It’s like a person that is use to punching a punching bag day in and day out for years, and all of a sudden, one day, you hit the bag and it feels like you hit a brick wall. You KNOW something was different about those people.