Why Does 'That' Thread Have So Many Flags??!! Allow Me To Explain...

reply to post by Wonderer2012

I follow what you're saying and while I don't know to what extent such organized efforts occur on ATS, we have seen evidence of such activities in the past in (for example) the 9/11 forums. The tactics there were slightly different but there was a degree or organization involved on the part of some members.

With the speed and various levels of communication available these days, those sorts of efforts are likely inevitable. The thing that concerns me is a point you also made in your last paragraph, where you referred to the "the main current reason for this". I'm glad you made that distinction, because "current" completely changes the perspective of your following comments about "the enemy" being Islam. Personally, I would have preferred a distinction between the religion and those who profess it, but I follow your point.

A couple of weeks back, the MSM were in total feeding frenzy over a very different "enemy" -- namely North Korea. It was the front page here and just about everywhere, it was the main content of the MSM news reports. The US was reportedly moving more assets into the region, Jim Clancy from CNN went over to Seoul to do live updates. Yadda yadda yadda.

The threads on here were numerous, to put it mildly.

Then the Boston Bombings happened and suddenly, NK simply vanished from the front pages of the MSM, and from here as well. For the next week or so it was Boston this and Boston that, and the whole while I was thinking: "But wth is going on in Korea? If it was such a threat, why are we hearing nothing at all now?"

Why? Simple. The MSM have to chase their ratings, for one thing. News is entertainment. It sells. So they foucs on whatever is the hot topic of the moment. It matters not one whit to the MSM if the world is on the brink of a nuclear war (if it really was anyway), they have something happening at home and it's (quote unquote) radicalized Islamic terrorists, so get out there with the news crews and report it 24/7!

North Korea? Who cares?

Oh, and now we get a double-edged sword. We've got Boston, we've got some guys up in Canada who got arrested while planning an attack (and they were apparently Muslim), and just purely by coincidence, they've found a chunk of plane from 9/11 in NYC.

All that is one edge. The other edge? Syria.

Remember them? They never went away. They just got ignored by the MSM for a while. But now, they need them to create the other edge. The enemy of the moment. And as the general public are pretty fed up with the usual Syria stuff, we get a new angle. Now intelligence sources have evidence that Assad's regime are using chemical weapons.

The North Koreans have nukes, and might even be able to launch one on a long-range missile. Might. We don't really know. But the Syrian govt forces have chemical weapons and they've been using them. Well, intellignece says they have evidence and that gets translated to fact graven in stone. You know how it is with the MSM.

Perhaps Boston became a problem? Perhaps there was too much focus on it and too many people were starting to ask some questions? I don't know. Just puttin g it out there and not asserting anything on that score. But maybe some people thought it was time to dig out some other enemies and dust them off and get the MSM focused on them.

So, getting back to here. What threads will come along next? Do some members on ATS just follow along on whatever the MSM media is feeding on at the moment and post new threads only on that? Yes, often that's the way. What else should we do? If we post on something that is not getting any coverage elsewhere, we are lucky if the thread gets a half dozen replies. And let's face it, people like some acknowledgement for their work.

Summary: it's not all sinister. Much of what we see here is a mirror of the MSM's current focus. However, I agree that some threads do seem to get a lot of credit for producing very little.