That whole thread is a circle jerk of paid shills.

What a fucking crock of shit this website is.

It's partly to do with how Reddit has circlejerked around gay marriage like it's the biggest issue that needed to be dealt with and why the top comment was the top comment. I absolutely agree that gay people deserve to be treated the same as everyone else but it's not really going to matter if the rest of your rights are systematically being attacked and taken away.

They threw gay marriage out to appease people at the right time because they knew the previous position was precarious politically and they'd gain ground in some people's eyes giving people what they want. Again, you can give that right to people, but don't expect it to mean anything after your basic rights to freedom of speech and the right to vote for a real candidate are gone for good.

Gay marriage does not effect a large amount of people, neither does it address the core issues in the US which is why they didn't fucking care about you having it.

Getting federal amendments overturned (regardless if it's DOMA or SOPA) DO matter....

sure they matter. but, an issue like gay marriage is just a distraction.

what evidence do you have that any particular person in that thread is a shill?

i believe there are shills here... figuring out which accounts are actually shills is a difficult but necessary task, if it's possible

You could tell by which questions are being pushed up responded to by Ron and the way in which they were responding to his responses.

When you spend as much time as I do reading news and scouring social networks you get pretty good at spotting astro turfing.

Yeah I noticed that, it could just be ron paul fanboys... probably both, though

Nope, because of what the majority of questions were about stuff like.

"WHY U NO VOTE AGAINST NDAA"

"Y U HATE GAYS"

"Y U FRIEND WITH PETER THIEL"(not sure if that there)

But you get the idea.

I'm with you... its just that plenty of intelligent people think reddit is too unimportant to have shills and isolating specific examples would go a long way

EDIT: Look at the frontpage of r/psychonaut... it looks like astroturfing to me too

its just that plenty of intelligent people think reddit is too unimportant to have shills

It's in the top 50 sites in the U.S. and almost top 100 globally according to Alexa.

4chan is 383 US and 833 global.

To think that is supremely naive, not a sign of intelligence.

nonetheless, intelligent people believe it. i think these people are intelligent despite the fact that i disagree with them on this point

Plenty of intelligent people at one point in human history believed that the Earth was flat. How'd that work out for them retrospectively in the hindsight of future human eyes.

not great. all i'm saying is that concrete evidence of specific people that are shills - or even a detailed statistical analysis of astroturfing on reddit - would go a LONG way towards creating that shift.

http://techrights.org/2013/06/09/reddit-infiltrated/

thanks, this is good to know. an important piece of the puzzle.

I don't know why you're getting down voted. Well, actually, I have a pretty good idea: many in this sub have yet to understand the level of conditioning and propaganda that pervades society. That's of course not to say that these people are definitively not shills, but claiming they are without a bank statement is hardly an empirically valid conclusions (further reducing any shred of credibility we have).

I pretty frequently look through the post history of alleged shills and it generally is contentious at best. These guys are almost always assholes who get down voted in every sub except conspiratard, who seem pretty clearly just closed minded trolls. Other times they are truly well meaning nice people who just fall for the strawmen that are debunking sites and the hope that none of this is true. When you have people like AJ getting painted as the face of conspiracy theory; when you have the slandering of the word and the ubiquity of its use; 14 years of federal indoctrination curriculum and the stamping out of critical thinking; and you have the overwhelming disinformation and the people who scam people out of their money with pseudoscience and outlandish conclusions, it's pretty easy to get cemented into the official narrative. And much of those same things cause people to get cementd into poorly constructed alternative narratives. Many people, including myself only a fe months ago, have this black and white view on things–either the conspiracy theorists are correct on the official story is correct–when in reality it's not like that at all.

/rant

thanks i appreciate it... i have a lot of very smart friends that i know irl and they definitely aren't shills but are still resistant to this stuff

accusing people of being shills is divisive and without evidence works to discredit conspiracy theory.

any evidence... just scroll in the ama. here il do it for u. eh nvm idk. theres shills everywhere

I couldn't believe it. What a bunch of brainwashed fools. Instead of asking constructive and hopeful questions, its all smear questions. All negative. What a miserable way to live.

Holy fuck, the ignorance and blatant disinformation is baffling.... People still think he wrote those newsletters? Lol, even if he did, does anyone really think he holds the same views?

I'm sorry, but Dr. Paul is way too intelligent to have the capacity for racism.

Edit: Remember that reddit users are like sheep. Only the stupidest of the stupid actually buy all that shit about Ron Paul being racist and whatnot.

Remember that reddit users are like sheep

But that doesn't include you, right?

It doesn't include everyone. Generally speaking though, I hold my own opinions and don't have to come up with them on the fly. I read a lot, so someone's comment about something or other doesn't effect my opinion much unless I'm ignorant about the matters being discussed. But if I don't know much about the subject, I tend to do my own research before making comments about it.

And I could ask you the same question as well my friend.

No you couldn't because you already assume he is a sheep like all of Reddit but you.

I don't assume anybody is a sheep. In fact, I'll admit to jumping on bandwagons before. Hell, I voted for Obama the first time around.

When it comes to politics, if you're not smart enough to go to several different sources and come up with your own opinion, and instead just regurgitate whatever you heard from the first source you hear it from, you are a sheep in my eyes.

Honestly though, I really don't care what you think about me because I have no idea who you are and chances are, you are guiltily of it like most people. Why else would you get so defensive about a statement I made that wasn't directed at anyone in particular? Unless it was to try to place yourself above me in some sort of play to demonstrate superiority, there's no reason that you can't agree with the statement that most people on reddit are sheeple(as scientific studies have proven).

And like I said, I'm probably guilty too, but at least I try to break away from the flock. I'm sure a lot of sheep will criticize other sheep who decide to walk their own paths.

Edit: oh, I'll ask any fucking question I want by the way. Try to stop me.

"I don't assume anybody is a sheep." "...you are a sheep in my eyes." "Most people on reddit are sheeple(as scientific studies have proven)." What scientific studies? What qualifies as sheeple? Stay salty.

Lol, You're cherry-picking quotes of what I said to try to make it look like I'm saying things that I'm not.

You didn't point out why I would consider someone a sheep... You know, the part where I explained how I would come to that conclusion without assuming everyone is a sheep.

Do you suffer from a reading comprehension problem?

Also, you should have clicked the link to the scientific study that I posted lol. Not going to keep linking to it purely because you're too stupid to click on it and read through it.

Since you have proven to be quite the dumbass, I won't be responding to your fallacious comments.

So superior. Such hostility. Wow.

Yeah, I hate people. Especially people who have no idea how to make a point without throwing around fallacies like a teenager who never paid attention in debate class.

Your arguments consisted of putting words in my mouth, playing the role of the Texas sharpshooter, and attacking my character. I never thought I was superior to you. You just proved to me that you can't have a logical argument, so why would I try to talk to you about anything?

"Do you suffer from a reading comprehension problem?" "Since you're too stupid" "Since you've proven to be quite the dumbass" Much ad hominem.wow. such hypocritical nature.

Well once I realized you wouldn't listen to logical arguments and your response was to just throw fallacies at them I figured I would follow your example.

I tried to be logical, but if you can't beat them, join them.

I tried speaking a language you would understand.

Since when has unintelligence been a prerequisite for racism?

Climate change is a well studied phenomenon, yet Dr. Paul doesn't believe that occurs.

Unintelligence isn't a word...

Being stupid isn't a prerequisite for being a racist, but a lot of racists have low IQs.

It would be pretty obvious if Dr. Paul was a racist. Have you ever met a racist who was good at hiding it? And if he is racist, but afraid to expose his racism, he'll probably support policies that would benefit other races to help hide that racism therefore negating his racism.

There isn't room to be a bigot in politics.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/unintelligence

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unintelligence

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/unintelligence

Being stupid isn't a prerequisite for being a racist, but a lot of racists have low IQs.

Then why say he cannot be racist if he's intelligent?

I edited my last comment. Honestly, his intelligence doesn't have a whole lot to do with it other than he's smart enough to know bigots don't make it far in politics.

is ur comment based off of what ppl were saying in the AMA? you're right about edditors being sheep. id say any large groups of humans suffer it. whats funny is i got 700 upvotes for copy- pasting a tweet from greenwald.

Lol, yupp!

and on another account months ago, i ago gold 2x for saying 'gime gold, now'.

The top comment is by an enoughpaulspam poster. There's also a hugely up voted comment from a one day account which has been pre-typed from some called R-P-S.

the R-P-S questions are really good: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1kw9u9/i_am_ron_paul_ask_me_anything/cbt8ncg

whats rps questions?

Questions posted by u/R-P-S that I linked to

yeah they're good questions. but as DAE_Cats said, id assume that they prepared for his ama with those shitty questions. idk

that doesn't really tell us much other than that R-P-S was prepared. it might just be an alt account made by someone who knew the AMA was coming up.

the 9/11 question is more important, so it could be controlled opposition question avoidance.

User is Ron Paul sucks, he basically admits it in an enoughlibertarianspam thread and several other 1500+ upvoted commenter in that thread are also from ELS. There is no doubt it was an organized vote brigade

fair enough... not everyone that dislikes ron paul is a shill, but i can understand why shills would want this to seem like the hardball post rather than 9/11

this. ^- and you're previous comment was nice too. much other than that R-P-S was prepared. it might just be an alt account made by someone who knew the AMA was coming up. the 9/11 question is more important, so it could be controlled opposition question avoidance.

yea they had that shit written up be4 , fuck em did he answer the 9/11 q?

noooooooope

Gotta say, and maybe I'm jumping the gun here but judging by your tone maybe not... if you're going to ask 9/11 questions be respectful, courteous, and don't be accusatory.

Don't make the "truthers" look bad.

I find it quite comical that most non-conspiracy subreddit users were all anticipating this flood of Ron Paul fan base circle jerking.

Most preparing for the AMA to specifically mock those who do support the man.

Although the flood never came; a plethora of controversial questions (yes some were credible questions) and pretentious accusations were outrageously up-voted.

To cut to the chase- the irony was shown throughout the thread, it's pretty blatant to see where the actual "circle jerkin'" was taking place.

I would just like to point out that the top comment was posted by /u/R-P-S ( Ron Paul sucks) and the account was made for the AMA which subsequently made some posts to conspiratard.

Shill is thrown around way too much in this sub, and I don't think without someone's bank statement do people have any validity in claiming someone a shill (in reviewing the post history of alleged shills have i never been convinced they are anything more than seriously brainwashed) but i think it's pretty blatant his intention was to derail the thread.

Edit: sp

Edit 2: in regards to the OP, I personally think bringing up 9/11 would be a terrible idea. To anyone whose looked into the evidence against the official story, it's pretty clear the Bush administration allowed the attacks to happen at best(of the time I've spent there is very little to suggest the administration themselves were anything more than puppets in the matter), but with the onslaught of mainstream media slandering, and strawmen like debunking911myths and Pop Sci's book, it's pretty clear that there is enough mainstream support to where deeming yourself a 'truther' (whether he is or not) or even hinting at it, would mean political suicide.

It's not about being right or having someone in office whom openly acknowledges the possiblity of the potential validity for narratives which are deemed 'conspiracy theories'. It's about the psychology and strategic planning of it all. It's about knowing how things work and then slowly de-brainwashing the public. Do you think anyone who first experienced someone like AJ through TV news would ever even consider that what he says has any validity? Disregarding the fact that AJ is likely a shill ( and is at best a con man)associating yourself with that which is deemed 'conspiracy theory', (especially from a raging lunatic like AJ) only goes to further prevent anyone from even considering looking into this information, and further tighten the cuffs which this system has upon the people. To effectively wake people up, you need to stay as close to what they believe as possible, and stay as close to the evidence as possible. I think RP reqlized this. If people 'wake up' so to speak and want to embark on the bottomless rabbit hole that is things like moonlanding, chemtrails, lizard rulers, etc (of which are, from my research, likely to be disinformation) then that's fine, but people need to be aware of the level of conditioning that exists (clearly few are or the word shill wouldn't be so pervasive) and strategically and intelligently plan accordingly.

/rant

Sorry i didnt mean to be rude. If i seemed harsh that wasnt my intent. just having a bad day after all the hate in the AMA–was really disheartening.

Also, i wasnt directing the comment exactly at you, just at the idea in general. Thank you for being open to my viewpoint.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1kw9u9/i_am_ron_paul_ask_me_anything/cbt8u1q help up vote please

those dam 9/11 truthers! conspiracy theorists!! (quoting maddow). since when is demanding truth on something.. bad... idk

Gotchya, up voted.. You get attacked yet?

Well that was a big load of sockpuppet bullshit

what do you know about it?

Paul is a truther. Talking about it could be bad for his sons re-election campaign. I wouldn't

not very brave

thousands of questions, tens of answers. Ask me anything, but I won't answer.

Would you answer thousands of questions that you've already been asked before and given answers to?

It would be like someone bringing up Obama's birth certificate every time Obama says or does anything. I'm not saying there are not people out there that do this, only that those people are usually not very intelligent and they sound like children in a car asking, "are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?". It serves no purpose other than bringing up questions that have already been answered and then pretending like those questions haven't been answered for some type of dramatic effect.

It's a way of making the uninformed feel as if they are informed without having to do anything on their own to actually learn the facts surrounding the circumstances.

Answering any of those thousands of questions that he has already given answers to would be a huge waste of time.

Questions posted by u/R-P-S that I linked to

this. ^- and you're previous comment was nice too. much other than that R-P-S was prepared. it might just be an alt account made by someone who knew the AMA was coming up. the 9/11 question is more important, so it could be controlled opposition question avoidance.

thanks i appreciate it... i have a lot of very smart friends that i know irl and they definitely aren't shills but are still resistant to this stuff

accusing people of being shills is divisive and without evidence works to discredit conspiracy theory.