This forum has become a hub of disinformation.

Long-time members will understand where I am coming from. I may not be a huge poster but I have been reading threads here since 2006. Over the last few months I have noticed a worrying trend of haphazard sensationalism, baseless predictions, and faux-facts driven threads.

There has been a serious lapse of common sense in thread-making and posting the past few months. This website used to be a daily visit for me. I used to love reading the threads, reading about people's personal experiences, and doing some research on my own based on threads. Now however when I come here all I see are predictions of doomsday that are always wrong. Baseless blaming of people for events based on coincidence and conjecture with no hard facts to back them up.

Facts.

Something that used to be paramount here. It seems that people no longer care about the facts and only care about what makes the most noise. When I read these threads I can't help but to literally face-palm and think "oh my god, are these people really that stupid?".

I hope that this isn't a lasting trend and after 2012 and the other "dates of doom" have come and gone things will be back to normal with great threads and common sense.

I think that this is a waiting period for both the members and the owners. We have seen a huge member increase. But all business people know. This come with a fault. This may be a weeding out period, or a phase. I personally think that its worth the wait.

Peace, NRE.

I do agree with you, I have seen several great threads come and go very quickly because they aren't attention grabbers or someone has come in and completely pirated the thread for there own agendas.

I have no problem with ideas, theories, and predictions (that actually have some substance), but I agree many of the stuff posted is baseless and should be in the below top secret area. I also think there needs to be better filtering of multiple threads about the same topic, like today there were two threads going about the breaking news of the shootings, only one was really needed.

reply to post by NoRegretsEver


Good point, I am willing to wait as long as it takes, as long as it helps wake people up.

reply to post by SG-17


lol since 2006 ? Took me about a week or two to figure out the real agenda behind this website. Maybe you should dig a little deeper, and not on this site..

Ya know, I never believed in much of that ‘diss-info agents on ATS’ conspiracy theory - until now.

Wow, I guess even I can have my eyes opened.

peace

For me waiting means to ignore nonsensical threads, and promote those that bring something to the table. I have been adding people to my friends list based ob their threads in order to ignore the ones that I know are looking for attention.

I have seen some threads here on other sites and have made the connection, We are not doomed, but have to be careful. We are in tough times. Dis-Info is not a a term to be taken lightly.

Peace, NRE.

being a member since Registered: 28-1-2007..

have you ever had all these strange things happening together?? 2010 we had..Floodings all over the world..extreme temperatures in most Europe, Asia etc, increase in Earthquake intensity, and now thousands but thousands of annimal die off (let me remind you that till this very moment..NO ONE WAS ABLE TO TELL US WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ALL THOSE ANNIMALS...WHY THEY ARE DYING...

now having this cocktail presented very close to the mystical 2012 date you know it makes you wonder

am i the only one??

regarding your register date..its a mater of when you found this site...nothing more nothing less...dont consider yourself an ATS immortal because of that...I encountered ATS many times before joining it but saw it iclined too much to paranormal ..ghosts...the famous lie of all OBE etc

I know I am new but I lurked for a very long time and I must admit the baseless sensationalism (NOV IS GONNA BE IT GUYS) and the predictions (SOMETHING GREAT OR SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN in 2011!) are stupid, so are the fuzzy webcams that update 2x a minute and people are claiming UFOs...

nonsensical threads

these existed in ATS from the beginning..i recall me and my gf making fun of threads stating they are Aliens way back 2007

reply to post by SG-17


True but you can do your bit to call out all of the points in your OP when you see them. Let battle begin. I actually believe that ATS is worth fighting for.

In many ways this is true.
It seems that most the boards are now regarded as a way to gather "Me Too" points. Instead of an idea being posted with rational information backing it up, and standing up to the merits of challenge which is a requirement in civilized discourse...

We get Original posts that basically say "I think this is so..." without any evidence of even a feint glimmer to back it up-and simple defensive rhetoric when people comment on it.

As for it being a 'dis-info agent' thing.. I have doubts. Personally I think a whole lot of people just like to have pet ideas be heard. Because they are pet ideas they have never had to defend them or even really examine them: It is a hard thing to have your ideas challenged when you mention for the first time due to the vulnerability it causes.

This makes a whole lot of resentment and contention.

Then we have threads which stupid terms thrown around like "sheeple" and saying anyone who disagrees with them are said Sheep or disin-agents or *gasp* skeptic (as if being a skeptic is somehow worse than having blind faith)...

There are too many divisive topics all crammed together on this site which brings a wide gathering of divergent people. The only thing we can do really is take things with a grain of salt, and if someone doesn't listen to reason: just ignore them. They wont be persuaded and its not worth the stress.

There are no disinfo agents on ATS, there is a large amount of disinfo idiots though.

There are two examples of well thought out and well written threads, things you don't really see anymore.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...


You can pick almost any thread on the front page of this forum (or most in this section) as an example of what my OP describes.

reply to post by Segador


No disrespect to younger people but I think much of this is down to kids joining in increasing numbers whose lives revolve round their X boxes and latest game. Not only are they bored but they are easy prey for loony fantasists. I've no doubt we will see an increase in the 'I'm an alien from the planet Zog' threads as well as posts from those who should be on meds and probably are.
Really you don't even need any such thing as a 'disinfo agent'. The job is already done nicely enough by these idiots.

reply to post by SG-17


The problem is not ATS. I believe it to be a reflection of a broader problem OUTSIDE of ATS.

The art of intellectual discourse appears to be in trouble.

Originally posted by loam
reply to post by SG-17

 

The problem is not ATS. I believe it to be a reflection of a broader problem OUTSIDE of ATS.

The art of intellectual discourse appears to be in trouble.

The biggest problems are:

1. The partisan nature of politics has infected most of ATS. we get idiocies like "God is a Republican" folowed by a counter argument of "Heck no! he is a Democrat" followed by "Proof is in the Bible".

2. Sloppy terminology. The local nutjob opens fires and some kid points out that he is a liberal leftist when the two are actually mutually exclusive political ideologies. People on ATS haver no understanding of the term Socialism ( which is a broad and vague concept) and Communism or even liberalism which really hurts my brain because we get into a "tower of Babel" situation.

my take on the dis-info and one hit wonders is that they all dig their own graves by what they claim and state.
it is up to the more clued up members to put silly posters in their place. no matter how long it takes the truth will eventually prevail no matter how much bs it's wrapped up in.
we should all consider and appreciate the vast amount of true knowledge on this site. there are many members from all facets of life with experiences we shall never know of.
i liken this site to walking through a field of cow crap searching for diamonds.
f

I lurked on here for years before I actually joined and in that time the quality of threads has declined rapidly. However, sometimes people are too quick to shoot the authors of some threads down because it is for instance about aliens and the "commentator" doesn't believe in them so calls hoax on it.
At the end of the day we should sort the wheat from the chaff and any thread as long as it has good information/proof should be approached with an open mind.

Originally posted by NoRegretsEver
I think that this is a waiting period for both the members and the owners. We have seen a huge member increase. But all business people know. This come with a fault. This may be a weeding out period, or a phase. I personally think that its worth the wait.

Peace, NRE.

Sadly this is the main problem , ATS has became a business and a good one and like it always happens with blooming business models , they tend to go for quantity instead of quality

I fully support the OP in his observations , this was my main news/hang out site for the past 3-4 years , I loved reading the insightful discussions and threads (even thou I did not participate in many due to lack of knowledge) because I always learned something new or interesting , but recently this became a joke of its past So many interesting and knowledgeable posters stopped visiting ats for the same reason, and this shows in the decline of good threads .

But I guess business is going good so why change a thing :/

This is just my opinion so no offense to the site owners because this is their money maker and I see the point in keeping up high click ratio ...