ATS Has Become An Online Tabloid

I use to frequent ATS a few years ago and found the site informative and interesting. I stopped due to other interests and finally came back not too long ago.

I don't know if it's the "dumbing down" of our country in general or the quality posters have left, but ATS is like a freakin' online tabloid.

Members post up over-sensationalized thread titles, you click on them only to find purely opinion pieces with no links to research, sources, ...etc.

Topics like, "Who Made God?" get lots of responses which are basically the same opinions written over and over again. Posters just want to talk about how they feel, when perfectly good features like Blogs and Podcasts are set up for you. to do so.

Okay that's my rant... SMH for doing the same kind of thing with this thread.

[edit on 5-11-2007 by Lemarchand]

reply to post by Lemarchand


ATS is made for topics like those. It's what it's for; opinions on alternative topics and intelligent discussions of them. I'm not saying there aren't those who don't fit the category of 'reasonably intelligent' here, but most are. It wouldn't be much of a forum if all it was, was just posting of news and things. There has to be member participation, and the forums allow you to get your ideas and opinions out. Otherwise you only see one side of the story.

ATS stands for Above Top Secret, it's about intellegent, rational discussion of the top secret: conspiracies. Increasingly, there has not been any rational or intellegent discussions, for example, go through the 'Aliens & UFOs' section. On the first page, I can count three intellegent discussions, but nothing worthwhile. Hot topics, top flagged topics? Not a single good topic.

Increasingly, people are coming up with the most absurd theories ever based on nothing but opinion. Let's take a look at the most popular shall we? Lucifer project. Chemtrails. Anything todo with Rense. Secret space station. Moon catcher. Lasers brought down WTC. The aircraft were holograms. George Bush is a reptillian. Stargates are real. The Coming Revolution. Micronuke theory. AC Microwaves.

All complete fakes with not an iota of proof, yet they are CONSTANTLY flagged and applauded for it? A large proportion of the remaining website is just double posts, 'why I beleive in christ', and polical agendas. Waste of time.

Now, it's freaken hard to find anything NEW here. Infact, I am enjoying going through posts from two years ago... some worthy real conspiracies that I'm sure you'll all like are: Brazillian UFO documentary, Water sucking UFO, George Knapp discussion, early John Lear discussion, aircraft stories, Early 9/11 discussion, and also the Research forum. Is anything like that discussed now? Nup.

Now, no one even questions absurd claims. They give them stars and flags. If I question it, it's, always, 'but you didn't have to read it and you don't beleive'. My posts may not be the best, but I do NOT start stupid topics nor do I flag stupid threads. I am beginning to wonder, WHY AM I HERE?

How low the mighty have fallen. RIP "Deny Ignorance", we will all miss you.

[edit on 5/11/07 by JimmyCarterIsSmarter]

reply to post by Lemarchand


I think it's got something to do with more people participating on the boards. It's an inevitable trade-off. You get more participants, but then then the level of quality drops because it follows the lowest common denominator. And people, generally speaking, are morons.

New members should be given a primer on what exactly [used to] make ATS great -- the quality content. That should at least lower a bit the level of unnecessary, complete, utter, waste-of-time posts. But then again, the primer I speak of is included at the top of every post submission form. Let me re-quote it again in all it's glory:

AboveTopSecret.com takes pride in making every post count. Please do not create minimal posts or simple "I agree" posts when replying to threads. If you need to quote a member's post in your reply, please ensure you edit down the quoted amount to the minimum needed to make your point. Overly large quotes or minimal replies are subject to warnings or deletion.

Maybe the fine print is too fine. Maybe people are just morons, like I mentioned before.