Shills on ATS?- negative posts that derail discussion

I have wondered about many of the posters on this thread.
That does not mean much though.
It is true though that posters respond to a thread when they have some type of interest in a subject.
My interest is that i believe that we have shills on ats.

What I want to know is, why is it that someone who doesn't agree or believe the conspiracy is always called a shill, and why these people, even though they rally against the left right divisive paradigm of the powers that be, use this shill stuff as an us versus them mentality?

Why do we absolutely have to believe in this stuff in order to not be a shill?

You might like this thread:

Confessions of a paid shill

True or lie? You decide....

reply to post by EvilSadamClone


Calling someone a shill is easier to swallow than me admitting i'm wrong.
I think it's called deflecting but that doesn't rule out some of the obvious instances of shillism.

Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
What I want to know is, why is it that someone who doesn't agree or believe the conspiracy is always called a shill, and why these people, even though they rally against the left right divisive paradigm of the powers that be, use this shill stuff as an us versus them mentality?

Why do we absolutely have to believe in this stuff in order to not be a shill?

I can't speak for others, but if someone actually discusses something and makes me realise I was wrong, I will be the first to admit it. 'Shills' however, just try and discredit at any opportunity. To be honest, it is quite clear which posters are shills. You have the intellectual ones that will use straw man arguments and also seemingly be very 'up' on the details of the official story yet will not accept facts. You then have the complete derailers who will try and make the OP look foolish etc.

When someone replies to one of my threads with a copy and paste block of text that is completely irrelevant and off topic and with links to random sites, then that is another matter!

The latter has happened to me a few times, especially in the 'general conspiracies' section.

reply to post by Wonderer2012


If and when this happens, please alert the post! It's much easier for staff to remove an off topic post than for members to end up derailed and sidetracked by the tactic!

~Heff

Originally posted by KarensHoliday
You might like this thread:

Confessions of a paid shill

True or lie? You decide....

edit on 25-9-2012 by KarensHoliday because: (no reason given)

Thanks for the link.

That was an interesting thread to say the least

reply to post by Wonderer2012


How about this.. Just the other day I started a thread about being a restaurant server. Everything was going great until page 3. This crazy lady shows up and posts like all this CRAZY stuff, LOOONG detailed restaurant experiences, It was off the wall.

Turns out she is well known for doing this for like 7 years now, she's "The Ranch Dressing Lady"!!! She joined ATS Just to mess with me or for whatever crazy reason

MAYBE the government dosnt like waitresses??? OMG What do i know, that I don't know I know; but THEY know I know????

reply to post by MidnightSunshine


Or someone who is either very bitter, very bored, or just mean spirited and who likes computers has developed a pet subject to rant about and sits around, hands wringing, just waiting for a chance to go full on GUNG-HO.

It's really common. Start a thread about "fathers rights" and I promise you that you'll have four members show up, acting nuts... and then if you ATS search for similar threads you'll find the same four guys dominating each and ever one.

Idle hands used to be the Devils workshop - now we've modernized and free time + Internet access is the Devils workshop.

~Heff