It amazes me how often I have to explain this to people.

Yeah, its pretty scary. But, hey, I guess the people who come here just to belittle us aren't exactly known for their critical thinking skills.

The Internet is fully militarized. I know it's a mega buzzword, a meme and all the rage the days these days, but people with experience in information security since long before it was the cool new thing for ever adolescent male on the Internet to pretend like he knows about. Back to the point. The Internet, the public Internet, is fully militarized. It has been now for half a decade. There were early signs of this back in the 07'-08' era, but it wasn't until the 09'-10' when it really b became apparent what was happening. IMO the early examples of the the public information warfare campaigns associated with this militarization started by targeting Wikipedia. Yes, this idea of shills and web brigades and the whole is a meme in and of itself at this point, but that doesn't mean it's not real/true. Useful idiots are everywhere.

There are two types and two classes of people in these places which can arranged in a matrix.. Honest/dishonest and informed/uninformed. There are useful idiots who genially don't know any better. And you have to put yourself in their shoes. If your entire exposure to a given subject was their exposure.. for example mostly everything you Average American knows about the world and other human beings he learned through corporate media. If all I knew about x was what the corporate media says, then what would be my position? These are honest uninformed people. On the opposite end you have people that know the facts about a given thing, but are boldly dishonest about it. Most of these people are shills, sock puppets, etc.

Good post. I'd love to hear you go into more detail about the signs of the web being infiltrated if you ever have time. Either here or in a self post.

[deleted]

Are you linking nosleep as proof? You know the whole point to that sub is that they're not telling the truth right?

[deleted]

Dude you implied the possibility of fact. You are literally using an argument from a fictional story

Did you forget the "might be bullshit" part?

He's claiming there's a possibility. There's not.

Thanks for that link

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm also very relevant.

Malcolm X has another analogy:

http://youtu.be/znQe9nUKzvQ

Reference this for deriding the efforts of the "dishonest informed".

The modern battlefield.

They are part of their own experiment. What a disaster.

Yes its shown that the CIA for example eats its own plastic dog food and sort of just ends up confusing itself.

The internet was militarized from it's inception, by DARPA, who created it.

This is not true. The early Internet, before the web, ie no HTML web sites, was all about information sharing. Pretty much everyone who was online back in those days was 2 things, a.) an adult and b.) very technologically literate. In stark contrast to the internet of today is dominated by the web infested with technologically illiterate adolescents. The web was invented, HTML 1.0, Lynx, all that good stuff.. Some people made web sites while the rest of us cynics laughed at this whole new "web" thing thinking it was doomed to fail. The biggest security threat on the early Internet was basically hobbyist hackers doing their thing. Think of the Morris worm for example. Eventually the corporations moved in. Once that happened shit really started to take off. Enter eCommerce. Enter grandma and that snot nose kid next door. This is the beginning of the end. With all that money comes Internet criminals trying to steal and scam it. These hackers continue to develop their skills. They make more money and invest in more sophisticated attacks. By the late 1990's or early 2000's the Internet started to become militarized. However it wasn't until about 2007 or so that the full blown information warfare style manipulations of social media really blew up. The primary threat actors on the net today are nation state sponsored. That doesn't mean the criminals aren't still doing their thing, and it doesn't mean the hobbyist aren't still doing their thing, but they're in the background now as far as threats the Internet at large faces. Today is an age of a new Manhattan project. The same vigor nation states applied in developing nuclear weapons in the context of kinetic war is being applied to developing 'end-game' cyber weapons. As they said in the Matrix, "Welcome to the real world."

http://www.darpa.mil/about/history/history.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet#Three_terminals_and_an_ARPA

I'm not sure you understand what is meant by the phrase "militarization" as it applies here. Just because the military funded the creation of the Internet doesn't mean that the Internet was militarized. Do you understand what is meant when one refers to the Internet being militarized? The fundamental technological capacity for such militarization of the Internet wasn't even close to existing back in those days and has only become a reality in past decade or so. We're talking about fully automated mass-scale surveillance, attack tools and malware, information warfare like censorship or manipulation, etc. Military funding is also responsible for just about everything else you see in the world in so far as science and technology goes. Did you not catch any of the Snowden leaks? Read about the mass scale automated exploitation the US government has deployed against the Internet at large? That's militarization of the Internet and it barely existed 10 years ago, much less back in early 90's when the www was born and certainly not during the days before then. The early Internet was about research and information sharing, not about espionage and command/control of a nation's critical infrastructure and/or asset control systems. Especially since that infrastructure and control systems didn't even exist yet..

That should clear things up.

who come here just to belittle us

Their only intention is to throw the scent off (place doubt in the mind) for new subscribers.

Or simply to shift the dialogue to a different context. Politicians do this particularly well.

I think if the full truth of terrorism was ever revealed, people would be astonished to find out who was actually in charge. I've heard some pretty good theories about all kinds of terrorist attacks going all the way back to Europe in the 1970's.

You want to get rid of some pesky political opposition, have them get hit/kidnapped by some "terrorists" that actually work for you. You want to get public support for government surveillance or for going to war? Terrorism!

If you subtracted MI6, Mossad and the CIA from the world, I bet that would eliminate the majority of the world's terror groups. Al Qaeda, ISIS and most of the Syrian opposition groups would go "poof". Maidan and MH17 would never have happened either.

Exactly right. Sometimes I entertain the idea that people are inherently good and that most of the people who aren't are too lazy or incompetent to actually back up their threats.

For example. Nobody killed Bush. Nobody killed Obama. In a country of over 300 million, with people foaming at the mouth about assassinating these leaders, it never happened.

Why, because the common people are not capable, for the most part, of doing it. Its just a theory, but it would explain why so many of the terrorist events on the world can be tied back to sketchy organizations with government/superpower ties.

Its like we reached a point where people are no longer that capable of performing international violence (due to a number of factors), so The Powers That Be have been forced to manufacture it.

I mean, think about the current state of the US. We are watching our country get destroyed by money and we are more aware of it than ever. But the common people just have too many other things going on in their lives to do anything extreme about it.

Damn I love how you worded this explanation.

The Drug War in America is a perfect example. A concept created to generate votes for a single election, expanded into a legal policy to oppress the undesirable classes into slave labor.

Most people are just living their lives. They are normal people who find comfort in their own work and play. It's the psychopaths that seek control and power and have no regrets. Minorities always rule over majorities because the majority of people aren't on the same level. We have insane and power hungry people making laws for the common people while they struggle with each other for power and the common people struggle with each other for survival under guidelines that don't fit with their beliefs and behaviour.

That's a really good point. Why has no one actually become angry enough to take out a particularly despised "representative"? Why have there not been any real terrorists? I don't get it. Wouldn't a member of an oppressed race or religion, if their adopted government was murdering millions of their countrymen back home, meanwhile turning public sentiment against people of their race/religion, go totally ballistic?

Sure, they say peaceful protest is more effective, but where does the restraint come from? I find it difficult to believe that no one has cracked yet.

Then when we get these very convenient attacks, they go after a bunch of cartoonists. Wtf? Why do that? Why not go and shoot some corrupt politician or anyone else who is far more likely to be involved in your oppression.

What kind of world would it be if any politician who advocated/voted for war in the middle east actually wound up dead? Isn't that how spies/paramilitary orgs would actually go about getting people out of the middle east? Don't they even have access to suicide bombers? Wouldn't it be pretty easy to kill anyone if you had no fear for your own life? Especially in America where you can carry a gun.

So many things that don't add up.

Yes, you understood my point completely!

Plus often the terror groups that are started in response to other groups e.g. ISIS from the CIA (partially at least)

ISIS is three things, Syrian rebel part, northern Iraq struggle, and the southern Iraq struggle.

all lumped together as 'ISIL' 'ISIS' etc etc.

then theres the comedy "Khorosan" thing invented from some 1500 year old map, some dumb shit at some TLA agency got trolled by a colleague and went public with the stupid meme.

remember its not what you know, its who you are related to.

Gladio, P2, Baeder Meinhoff, not simple and not a nice world.

stupid evil people playing stupid evil games.

there should be international treaties and a cessation to these nasty games, the World might become a much nicer place.

This is a silly argument to make for 2 very obvious reasons.

1. The number of active users on this subreddit is much, much smaller than the 1/4th of a million you claim.

2. Every time I come here after a tragedy/shooting, the false flag op-eds are upvoted to the very top. The current largest one is sitting at an 83% upvote percentage. I suppose on could make the argument that the people upvoting it don't necessarily agree with it, but I'd describe that as being a tenuous claim at best.

It's 10am EST and there are currently 593 users here now.

Exactly; it is not a controversial notion that the active userbase of a subreddit is small fraction of the total number of subscribers.

Doubly so if you subscribe to the notion that this subreddit is constantly brigades by shills and downvote bots and ban evaders.

Every time I come here after a tragedy/shooting, the false flag op-eds are upvoted to the very top.

While that's a good observation, it should not concern any individual who comes here to honestly post and read. Worrying about this sort of thing leads to manipulation of the same, or caring that someone else manipulated it.

1) Irrelevant, there could be 5 people in this sub and the ideas of one are not represented by all of them.

2) I see topics in this sub reach the front page at 100 votes and I see some at 3000+ votes. The idea that everyone here believes everything is a false flag because they get on the frontpage is ludicrous. How many opposing views get upvoted onto the reddit front page?

Stop trying so hard to argue.

1) Irrelevant, there could be 5 people in this sub and the ideas of one are not represented by all of them.

No, but the ideas of a representative sample of a population reveal information about the entire population as an aggregate. By and large, every time one of these shootings occurs, a relatively large number of threads appear to label it a false flag, and they are generally upvoted and heavily discussed. So on the aggregate, this sub does seem to uncritically apply the false flag label to every major incident of violence. Your making the mistake of trying to apply these (valid) aggregate conclusions onto individiuals in a population.

The idea that everyone here believes everything is a false flag because they get on the frontpage is ludicrous

It's a good thing that isn't what I'm claiming. Once again, your attempting to apply aggregate statements to individuals as a counter-example, which does not work. It's textbook fallacy of division.

I'm glad every shooting is discussed here and the questions of whether it could be a false flag are asked. This is /r/conspiracy and this is what the sub is for. The incident is not automatically labelled, the official story is automatically questioned.

This is definitely true that some users are just asking questions. But quite often, the incident is automatically labeled as opposed to just questioning the officially story.

Look at the (upvoted) main thread on the topic currently

The "terrorists" wore masks, but thought to bring their ID's (and leave the IDs in the car) ??!? Pah-lease. It's 2015!! Are we still that gullible ?! (The real perpetrators hope we are.) "

Hypothetically, if you wanted to discredit the sub, how long would it take you to make an over-the-top post that paints "the sub" (aka "that one, particular user") in a bad light?

We have an array of subreddits specifically dedicated to trolling the users here (not exactly a challenge) and more popping up daily as our oldest antagonist, /r/conspiratard, changed their rules to more or less leave us alone.

Anyways, stop treating anonymous opinions like quantifiable data, it makes you seem silly.

Hypothetically, if you wanted to discredit the sub, how long would it take you to make an over-the-top post that paints "the sub" (aka "that one, particular user") in a bad light?

Half hour or so of designing methodology, hour or two of data collection, half-hour of analysis and hypothesis testing or so. I like looking at interesting statistics though, so I wouldn't classify it as work. There is of course no guarantee that the results would support my notion that the sub is very supportive of labeling most major tragedies a false flag. That's what makes this such a worthwhile endeavor. We'd actually be learning things about the community.

Anyways, stop treating anonymous opinions like quantifiable data, it makes you seem silly.

You've obviously never worked with statistics. I don't need names attached to find a populations weight distribution, and I certainly don't need them to gauge this subreddits distribution of opinion on a subject.

Now I'm really tempted to write a bot in python to scrape data on subreddits. That could lead to some very interesting problems in computational sentiment analysis, and who knows, maybe the end result would be you could point to the results and say that "objectively, conspiracy is not in fact anti-semetic" every time the accusation pops up.

I want to see this. I think it's a great way of answering a quantifiable question: by and large, does this sub cry false flag on most major tragedies? Why wouldn't that be a good question to answer?

I think it'd be very interesting, but most people here seem flabbergasted at the notion of getting any general property of the group from data. Everyone on this subreddit is an island apparently.

So take away the water. Then they are just hills

Hours? It takes less than a minute to make up a name and get right to shitposting.

You're assertion that meaningful statistics can be pulled from anonymous opinions is incredibly ignorant.

Do you think nobody lies on the Internet? Nobody trolls? Nobody engages in half-hearted musings in a sub based on speculation? Nobody exaggerates?

Your data would, at best, reflects words typed here. Not intent, honesty, or conviction.

For sake of argument, pretend I responded to this post with the username notformalpants and disagreed with everything I just typed.

How would that be interpreted in your data analysis? Hint: inaccurately.

Hours? It takes less than a minute to make up a name and get right to shitposting.

My apologies; I entirely misinterpreted your post. When you said

Hypothetically, if you wanted to discredit the sub, how long would it take you to make an over-the-top post that paints "the sub" (aka "that one, particular user") in a bad light?

I thought you were flippantly describing a hypothetical post I would make, designed to paint the sub in a bad light, describing my statistical analysis, hence my response regarding hours to develop methodology and all.

Do you think nobody lies on the Internet? Nobody trolls? Nobody engages in half-hearted musings in a sub based on speculation? Nobody exaggerates? Your data would, at best, reflects words typed here. Not intent, honesty, or conviction.

I'm sure they do, but believe it or not, there is mathematics behind quantifying these things. It's a burgeoning field (and an incredibly interesting one, I might add), no doubt, but it can be done. You're denying that meaningful statistics can be pulled from anonymous opinions flies in the face of work a lot of very smart people have been doing.

How would that be interpreted in your data analysis? Hint: inaccurately.

If it happens infrequently, it would be strongly outweighed by all the genuine posts on the subreddit, so it wouldn't affect the accuracy of the results at all. Afterwards, we could even calculate how many "shitposts" would need to be in the analysis to throw it off, and by how much, using uncertainty quantification. So, sure, there may be error bars at the end of the analysis, but their usually are for most meaningful statistics.

I'm not seeing anything in your article with respect to honesty or intent (other than intended emotional impact). A few parts that caught my attention:

A human analysis component is required in sentiment analysis, as automated systems are not able to analyze historical tendencies of the individual commenter, or the platform and are often classified incorrectly in their expressed sentiment.

So basically it comes down to a persons opinion, not an objective analysis, as corroborated here:

The accuracy of a sentiment analysis system is, in principle, how well it agrees with human judgments.

Which is imperfect:

according to research human raters typically agree 79%[29] of the time

Further, the whole area of study seems shaky and narrow in scope:

The problem is that most sentiment analysis algorithms use simple terms to express sentiment about a product or service. However, cultural factors, linguistic nuances and differing contexts make it extremely difficult to turn a string of written text into a simple pro or con sentiment.

I'm not seeing anything in your article with respect to honesty or intent (other than intended emotional impact). A few parts that caught my attention:

The wikipedia article isn't the most comprehensive look at the subject. Check out the Journal of Computational Linguistics. All of it's articles are free, and it has papers on detecting sarcasm and other statements that actually reflect the opposite of what may semantically be being said.

So basically it comes down to a persons opinion, not an objective analysis, as corroborated here:

There is no objective meaning in linguistics at all, which is what the article is making reference to. The next part you highlight is incredibly important:

This is usually measured by precision and recall. However, according to research human raters typically agree 79%[29] of the time (see Inter-rater reliability).

If two people claim that a statement has different sentiment, which of them is objectively right? The computer is designed to do as good as humans are because themselves can't agree. And because language only exists inasmuch humans agree it does, it can't possibly beat them at it.

In any case, you can do an objective analysis of the statistical distribution of set of subjective data. Movie scores are an example of that. Movies can't be objectively bad, but you can measure a population's opinion on them and determine if most people think they are bad.

Further, the whole area of study seems shaky and narrow in scope:

It was 6 years ago when the article making that claim was written, but like I said, it's a brand new field that makes leaps and bounds every year. Seriously, check out the MIT journal I linked above.

Do you believe in subjective truth?

I really don't want to spend days on end shifting goal posts with you, your original linked source quite disagrees with your original sentiment.

Language is by definition subjective, because it is comprised of a set of rules humans agree on, as opposed to something like physics, which approximates something independent of human existence, those being the laws of reality.

If all the humans on the planet died tomorrow, what would the inscription "The quick fox jumped over the lazy brown dog" mean in the absence able to read it?

I'm not shifting the goalposts; you claimed it couldn't be done; I have pointed out, that there are in fact ways of doing it, but as in any science, there are going to be error bars attached to it. Just because you aren't satisfied with the state of the science currently doesn't mean I have to be. You hadn't even heard of it until yesterday.

Exactly! Anyone saying "Now let's wait until more details come out" is downvoted to oblivion and sometimes banned. So much for "keep an open mind" and "respect all opinions"...

There is no argument you can make that proves it isn't an illusion.

There is no "representative sample" on this subreddit because this sub is designed to be a place where people can post discussions about theories that they may not even fully believe in.

People can then upvote those theories just for the sake of the discussion.

And regardless of why anyone posts or upvotes, the front page at any given time is not a representation of what the entire subreddit believes in

It is an illusion. A fallacy. Something that seems obvious, but it actually wrong.

I would argue that not even 1% of the people here believe that every event of the last year was a false-flag. They believe a couple were and maybe they have suspicions about a couple more. When thousands (or even hundreds) of these opinions overlap, it gives the illusion of a consensus.

There is no argument you can make that proves it isn't an illusion.

Except a statistical one, which is exactly what statistical hypothesis testing is designed to do. I'm actually quite willing to do a statistical survey on false-flag posts here and make you a collaborator in the whole endeavor if you are genuinely curious about the aggregate attitude toward labeling everything a false flag (though it'll have to wait until next week, I'm finishing up coauthoring a proceedings paper over the weekend).

There is no "representative sample" on this subreddit because this sub is designed to be a place where people can post discussions about theories that they may not even fully believe in.

That doesn't somehow insulate you against statistical hypothesis testing and the like. There can definitely be drawn a representative sample of this subs-users, just like every other population.

And regardless of why anyone posts or upvotes, the front page at any given time is not a representation of what the entire subreddit believes in

Obviously, but once again, it is a good representation of what the aggregate of the subreddit user base believes. I'm not saying every user on this sub thinks everything is a false flag. I'm claiming that the typical user is inclined to post/upvote the false flag narrative, and what's more, I'm willing to do the legwork to prove it.

It is an illusion. A fallacy. Something that seems obvious, but it actually wrong.

You do know that is exactly what statistics is designed to tell right?

I would argue that not even 1% of the people here believe that every event of the last year was a false-flag. They believe a couple were and maybe they have suspicions about a couple more.

I agree entirely, but this isn't the point I am arguing. Once again, you're applying my arguments to individual users as opposed to the aggregate of users.

I'm claiming that the typical user is inclined to post/upvote the false flag narrative

No shit. That's how reddiquette works.

A tradition more honored in the breach than the observance.

So what you are saying is that false flag attacks are not "on topic" in this subreddit and that those posts are upvoted out of spite?

Ok, I agree on some points that this is a thinking ground, and the self posts theory discussions are by far my favorite part.

But there's definitely a reddit stereotype here, represented by actual users who are, in fact, mentally ill, very young, and lack logical reasoning. And yes, there's a good couple dozens of Jew-haters.

But there's also a crazy amount of trolls and brigades, users posing as conspiracy users, and often fooling even the mods.

No, but the ideas of a representative sample of a population reveal information about the entire population as an aggregate.

So everyone in your family is a cunt?

I don't think everything is a false flag. You are here and obviously you don't think everything is a false flag. Pretty obvious that op doesn't either.

Quit trying to quantify people, you suck at it.

Good thing I never said that everyone thinks it's a false flag this specific instance.

Do you deny wholesale that any meaningful aggregate properties can be discerned from the posters on this sub?

I deny wholesale that you lack the information, software and/or intelligence to pull a large enough data set from this sub needed to show any meaningful pattern.

Therefore you are speaking in generalities which conform to any bias that you brought here with you.

In other words, completely out of your ass.

I deny wholesale that you lack the information, software and/or intelligence to pull a large enough data set from this sub needed to show any meaningful pattern.

Well, I have the relevant educational background, a Matlab personal license, and Numpy/Scipy to help me manage something like this.

Therefore you are speaking in generalities which conform to any bias that you brought here with you.

I don't know which way the analysis would go; if I did, why would I go through all the effort to do it. I have a hunch, but I wouldn't put money on it. You can even help me design the experiment so you can't scream "methodological flaw" afterwards.

Fair deal?

No. I don't care enough about reddit to make it into a science project.

I'm constipated. That is the only reason why me, you and my Ipad are having this conversation.

Come on it'll be an exciting opportunity to learn something interesting!

You forgot multiphysics. Multiphysics proves your point. Anybody here who doesn't know what multiphysics means is too dumb to have an opinion.

Do you have any idea what that even is yet?

Don't be flippant that I haven't responded to your long post in the other thread yet; as I've stated here I am working on a project so effort posts are of the table from me for some time.

I said in my previous reply that I knew what it was and asked you to name your wager after you challenged me. Name your wager. I promise you I will concede any point from our previous discussion that depends on me knowing what multiphysics means. I wrote all this over 24 hours ago. I however am struggling to see any of my points that depend on knowing what multiphysics is. However your entire argument rests on the term. Your entire argument is that multiphysics caused the wtc towers to collapse in the fashion they did. Name your wager.

That's not my argument: my argument is that multiphysics is the reason why your intuition and expectations useless in analyzing the collapse. In any case leave it out of this thread; wait for my long response in the other thread or shoot me a message.

I am sure your response will be long.

Yeah well a complete and nuanced understanding of physics doesn't lend itself to sound bites.

I look forward to it.

lol, listen to this tough guy. name ur wager bro. bring it on. im a marine sniper. i owned over 300 noobs.

Wait, we have over a quarter million subscribed and noticably few active...

There's about a quarter million "inactive" users here? No wonder we see vote manipulation and whatnot. The overwhelming majority of users don't even visibly participate.

By subscribing here I see the articles on my front page and can decide if I'll come to the sub and read more.

Most of them are just software, I'm sure.

If I didn't learn anything else on this sub , I learned there is more to most stories then we are told. Most we see on TV or newspapers are half truth at best. 1/4 million people are good sign that others are "awake or at least curious enough to want to inform their selves of other points of view. I am still not sure what happened with 911 but 1 thing I'm sure of I we are not being told the TRUTH about what really happened. The same sword we use to cut to the BS from news is also used to cut the BS from this sub and at least consider if even part of what we see here is true it's still not good. The facts that come out here, more so the facts in history books and FOIA fact sheets in themselves are reason alone to ask more questions and not trust the answers the mainstream media, politicians, police or organized religion feeds us.

I always find it amusing to watch TV news after reading about the stories and reading actual journalist investigations. The news covers only 5% of the story. There's never any context. It's just a smear campaign or a hidden agenda to get people to only think about one aspect of the event.

TV News: "Group A attacks group B in place C."

Why? What? Where? When? (Who?)

In grade school we were taught to elaborate and form a complete story. The news doesn't follow this model. They always leave out the most important W's.

Average viewer, "Those dirty Muslims attacked a Western nation!"

And the beautiful part for big media is that they can't really know who or why so they get to report in a legitimate and knee jerk fashion what they do know. And the people develop the same knee jerk reaction. This is the problem with globalism in news. Inciting hatred is illegal except if your big business and the people being hated aren't "us".

Even when they say "And let's go to so and so for an in depth report." There is no fucking depth! How about some facts for us. Names places details. Like you said, "a complete story" or at the minimum, everything you know. I remember when journalists actually tried to dig into politicians. Now that won't get you invited to the function or that party. It's a fucking joke.

I never post but I read everything. Keep fighting the good fight. Someday we will bring down tyranny

actually if you take away the dupe and banned accounts its probably 200k or less

The point still stands, this subreddit is one place where thousands of opinions congregate. That gives the illusion of one unified group that believes in all of them.

You have to be pretty willfully ignorant to believe a sub-reddit (or even reddit actual) is in any way a singular entity.

Yet these people exist.

Yes, you hit the nail on the head!!! I couldn't quite find that wording but your first sentence gets it done quite well.

But that idea was in place for conspiracy before this; now we have a page to discuss things and people, as people do over generalized.

This subreddit rarely has more than 800 people in it (661 as I type). Using the subscribed number is disingenuous.

Compare it to another sub with 250k. I bet our numbers vs amount of people here is much higher/better than a comparable sub.

So the people saying "you guys think everything is a false-flag" are getting confused by an illusion created by thousands of individual overlapping opinions.

That's never happened before. /s

I've seen this misunderstanding in other contexts often enough to think it's a common phenomenon. It's just hard to get people to see that sometimes.

Shill. Troll. False Flag. Limited Hangout. Jews. Illuminati. Bloodlines. Alex Jones. David Ickes. Sandy Hook. 9/11. Mossad. Wash. Rinse. Repeat......

Well, not quite.

The people in r/basketball will downvote anyone who says that the Sacramento Kings will win the championship, because they are truly a horrible team.

r/conspiracy does not police users who post wildly inaccurate points of view.

The people of r/conspiracy are mostly just so tired of being abused that they let everything but hostile meanness just lay as it is. In this hobby just not having someone berating me is a luxury that I'm content with.

the paris shooters look like white guys and they left an id behind which is a classic component of previous false flags. if the id is a brown guy i think it is fair to say the plan is fucked. and all this a week or so after france came out in favor of palestine...

Yeah, I'd imagine no proof will once again be offered beyond this passport coincidence, and one of the three that they want to take the fall [http://www.nst.com.my/node/68945?m=1](was at school during the event).

"Confusion" is the best mind numbing drug on the planet!

They get up voted though.

I'm getting that same line from people who know me well.

These people NEVER think there's a conspiracy or false flag afoot, but because they believe that's the "normal" way of thinking, they assume I am the binary/polar opposite of them because they disagree with my assertions some of the time. It's a very useful knee-jerk that the majority of the population doesn't realize they have.

Broken logic everywhere in anti-intellectual society.

I think the fact that the "false flag" posts are routinely at the top tells us that much of the readership agrees.

I think it's kind of an embarrassment.

But, then again, I think that a large percentage of the posters here are dimwit antiSemites with the education of a glass of water and the critical thinking abilities to show for it.

So why do I check a couple times a week? Because the conspiracy theory world has, over the 20 years I've been looking at it, sometimes been dead on, and weeks or months ahead of the curve. Most of the time it's just dumb and wrong. But sometimes the ignorance and cynicism of this subculture, which sees sinister doings in every news story, is actually really useful for exposing something closer to the truth. It's more than "right twice a day." It's actually right a pretty sizable minority of the time. Not enough to use as your main source, but a very good jumping off point for further thought and inquiry.

Back in the 90s, the brother of a friend was a kind of weird recluse who lived in the woods and wrote a conspiracy 'zine, lie Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. One night when he was driving home to his place, on the dark rural road there, he was waved over by some guys in suits. They beat him so badly he is permanently disabled, partially because he was afraid to go to the hospital after that and just treated his injuries himself. He never knew who he pissed off, but he knew it was someone dangerous.

Now, "brother of a friend of some dude on the internet" is pretty much the definition of an urban legend, so I definitely recommend taking my story as a grain of salt, but it's been clear to me that there are things afoot at all times that we're not supposed to know about. It's worth keeping an eye out for incongruities.

But that doesn't make everything a false flag. I'm pretty sure that 3 French radicalized dipshits shot up a magazine staff because they didn't like some pictures they drew. I also think that Islamists flew those planes into those towers, and that the burning jet fuel was enough to bring the buildings down as they did because of the weird construction of those buildings.

But I also think the US government knew all about it and let it happen.

I think the fact that the "false flag" posts are routinely at the top tells us that much of the readership agrees.

And you would be wrong. As I have already stated countless times, that is an illusion.

There is no "readership", there is a constant changing influx of different people upvoting different things on different days. Also , some things are upvoted to 500, some are upvoted to 3000+, etc...

...ok...why is ANYONE still watching the news?

...the jig is up. Someone should say, "if you watch the news and then get together to debate which parts are real or not, you're going to have a bad time!"

I get all my news from /r/undelete.

More people believe in more strange thing like evolution or polytheism.

I just sub to this to laugh sometimes. I love you crazy fuckers.

I feel that way about all the major subreddits.

I get what you're saying but still; when I first got into this sub it was about conspiracies like UFO's, illuminati, shit like that. Fun stuff that seemed to have a grain of truth. Even the 9/11 stuff was interesting to chew on. All this crisis actor stuff and "they're doing it to take our guns" bullshit is just depressing, impossible to believe and in my opinion has taken all the excitement out of it. And by excitement I mean the feeling I used to get as a kid reading about bigfoot and the Bermuda triangle and things like that. The "everything is a false flag" has indeed muddied the waters of what this sub used to be like.

You are welcome kind sir! I'm never to ashamed to piss in someone's breakfast cereal.

Just don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining

So the people saying "you guys think everything is a false-flag"

Hence why this is called /r/conspiracy

I wouldn't be so sure there are 275,000 people reading this like it says

The bible talks of "the war of all against all"...this is our ego and our opinions and our personalities that vie against each other in a natural way because there are a lot of different perspectives and ways of looking at things...the solution is to not be so fucking single minded and to expand your way of looking at things and to be able to understand someone's opinion without it eclipsing your own thoughts and perhaps even to let some of it contribute to your own thoughts. Reddit itself is actually the "war of all against all" cast into text...so we must resist the urge to constantly fight against each other and instead try to understand each other...not compromise or submit...but to understand.

I cant believe you guys haven't already solved the Paris shooter incident. Everyone here was so certain they found the real guys who planted the Boston Marathon bombs and the top secret mercenaries that were there. Why hasn't there been some wing nut theory for Frances false flag?

That's why so many people come to this sub. Not for serious belief in this bullshit, just for the lulz.

You make it sound as if you believe everything you are told by the press and your government, as if conspiracy and cover-ups aren't real things.

It shows a lack of understanding of basic history and comes across a bit ignorant. No one suggests that everything is a conspiracy but the world has seen enough BS (from all governments) over the past 50 years to make anyone of sound mind question things.

To be able to think for yourself is a blessing.

Letting the government think for you is blindness.

You make it sound as if you believe everything you are told by the press and your government, as if conspiracy and cover-ups aren't real things.

It's not just that. How often do we see this kind of attack on this sub? It's as if he believes everything he reads everywhere and has no personal judgement or experience to draw upon to separate fact from fiction.

Oh look, exactly the kind of comment I am talking about.

Thanks for showing up and providing a real world example for all the people who actually understood the headline.

I cant believe you guys

lol

Everyone here was so certain they found the real guys who planted the Boston Marathon bombs

No they weren't.

I cant believe you guys haven't already solved the Paris shooter incident

It happened like yesterday, we're not magicians.

In my time zone it happened like half a week ago. Don't you fuckers have 24 hour news channels? What's wrong with you people? You know this was a false flag attack, perpetrated by an evil shadow government that hides things like aliens and Bigfoot. Damnit man, the reddit was formed so wise men and women, like yourselves, can disprove mainstream, lamestream, and things called facts and right the wrongs written by those capable of critical thinking.

Shake the o eye boogers off, shape up and stop slacking off. Either Hitler, Jews, greys, the Pope, the illuminati, or all the above were behind this mess, and Nostradamus predicted it. Get the tin foil and wrap the fuck up.

I cant believe you guys haven't already solved the Paris shooter incident. Everyone here was so certain they found the real guys who planted the Boston Marathon bombs and the top secret mercenaries that were there.

how do you know we didn't?

how do you know we didn't?

Because they shot the shit out of the 'real guys', remember?

It was all over the news. Dead men can't testify.

how

:)

the funny thing is that this sub wasn't one of the many subs that misidentified the boston bombers as the dead kid from brown or the other two kids. This sub pointed out the mercs. It turned out that they were national guard, but the whole issue was never really addressed by the media.

It turned out that they were national guard

nope, Craft people. NG have a recognizable US uniform, they don't wear merc gear. in fact it prob is illegal for them to wear non US or state uniforms on duty.

You're a regular here, and I frequently upvote your submissions, so I'm not being argumentative - just stating that they are definively a national guard cst wmd team- I believe out of new York, But I'm not going to look it up. You can find their public website and interviews with the guys in the photos. It's not a secret.

They were probably wearing craft hats because they had done firearms training there.

Everyone here

wrong, it was a wide selection of redditors, people from many different subreddits, it was a live and ongoing news story, are people supposed to not think and ponder !?

most people were following the story, was hard not to at the time.

That's why so many people come to this sub. Not for serious belief in this bullshit, just for the lulz.

Pretty much.

Which is the equivalent of hanging out in r/guitar and making constant comments about how the piano is better.

Pathetic.

[deleted]

If you spend a large amount of time trolling on reddit, you were probably sitting at the "autist's" table.

[deleted]

Being a "joke" amongst the circlejerk this website has become is practically a compliment.

Oh come on now. It's really only a joke in the small number of subreddits formed specifically to ridicule it; isn't it.

I've seen it laughed at at some stage or other on a lot of the subs I frequent and the vast bulk of these are certainly not formed to ridicule this sub.

Rule #10: Do not attack the sub.

School is a great analogy.

Most of you are still young children in school, yet to experience life in the real world. So it is unsurprising you act and think the way you do.

Most of you are still young children in school, yet to experience life in the real world

The 'wise-old-enlightened-conspiracist-among-sheeple' routine. Always a classic!

Yes, call me a "truther" next.

"Hurr durr, hey guise, this guy is after the truth, lets mock him."

Now the 'persecuted-seeker-of-truth/martyr-for-our-ignorance' schtick.

Keeping it old school.

Me likey.

I like the fact that you can't help but respond to my posts.

Because every time you do, it pushes my post into a higher ranking thus giving it more exposure to the people on the subreddit.

Because every time you do, it pushes my post into a higher ranking thus giving it more exposure to the people on the subreddit.

Jeez, you people really do see conspiracies in everything, don't you?

Wow, do you not understand how reddit algorithms work?

So you think basic math is a conspiracy now? Hahahaha.

There's the autism I mentioned earlier.

I was refering to your little theory about why I was responding to you.

Hahaha, you are still doing it.

Can't help yourself huh? Have to have the last word.

Keep bumping up my thread.

Why would I stop talking just cos you reached some imaginary conversation point in your head where I should have? That's weird, even for you lot.

Only one of us cares about imaginary internet points so glad I'm making your day better x

Go take a class about rhetoric. Also, get a real job. Maybe try to help people agree as a mediator rather than divide them as a childish "intelligence" agent.

Of course I'm a government shill :D

I know people get abuse on here for not buying into all the stuff but I never thought I'd be accused of actually being an agent. Love it! And yet you still don't understand why people come here for the laugh?

[deleted]

Ok, I was joking before but you seem to have some serious issues going on. Bring-an-AR15-to-work kind of issues.

Look, I know you're getting some major buzz out of thinking I'm some sort of government agent sent here to personally torment you for your "secret knowledge" and starting you off on the adventure you seem to crave. But I'm just a regular guy who finds paranoid flights of fancy hilarious - most of the time.

I'm kind of worried about you, talk to someone, mate, a professional. Get the help you need.

You don't seem to get it. I am using your trolling to my advantage. I don't know how I can explain it any clearer.

You don't test well, do you?

I'm not trolling and I don't mind I've made your day better. I already said that. Dunno what's hard to understand about it x

Hahaha, keep them coming.

You and me have had disagreements before, but don't waste your time on this troll. Your time is better spent making good posts like the one we're presently in.

That isn't even what he meant. Good lord... do you know what the word "conspiracy" means?

They clearly are confused about a lot of things in life, so they retain the shield of ignorance and bury their head in the sand, as if that magically makes the truth go away.

These are the same people who coined the word "truther" as if digging deeper than the surface was a negative thing.

Truth dat ;)

You have nothing better to do than her negative comment karma? Maybe just return to world news where you can spout statist propaganda and collect all kind of positive imaginary internet points

You have nothing better to do than her negative comment karma

People actually care about comment karma?

Jesus Christ...

what a retard.

More like a conspiratard; get my drift?

and they leave with disturbed widened minds, eyes opened and a fresh perspective on the world.

if they leave the same as they arrived, they either are TLA trolls or thick-as-pig-shit.

if they leave the same as they arrived, they either are TLA trolls or thick-as-pig-shit.

'Everyone who disagrees with me is a troll or stupid'.

Bravo.

Being a "joke" amongst the circlejerk this website has become is practically a compliment.

Exactly right. Sometimes I entertain the idea that people are inherently good and that most of the people who aren't are too lazy or incompetent to actually back up their threats.

For example. Nobody killed Bush. Nobody killed Obama. In a country of over 300 million, with people foaming at the mouth about assassinating these leaders, it never happened.

Why, because the common people are not capable, for the most part, of doing it. Its just a theory, but it would explain why so many of the terrorist events on the world can be tied back to sketchy organizations with government/superpower ties.

Its like we reached a point where people are no longer that capable of performing international violence (due to a number of factors), so The Powers That Be have been forced to manufacture it.

I mean, think about the current state of the US. We are watching our country get destroyed by money and we are more aware of it than ever. But the common people just have too many other things going on in their lives to do anything extreme about it.

Go take a class about rhetoric. Also, get a real job. Maybe try to help people agree as a mediator rather than divide them as a childish "intelligence" agent.

You don't seem to get it. I am using your trolling to my advantage. I don't know how I can explain it any clearer.

You don't test well, do you?

You have nothing better to do than her negative comment karma

People actually care about comment karma?

Jesus Christ...

Oh come on now. It's really only a joke in the small number of subreddits formed specifically to ridicule it; isn't it.

Rule #10: Do not attack the sub.

Plus often the terror groups that are started in response to other groups e.g. ISIS from the CIA (partially at least)

I've seen it laughed at at some stage or other on a lot of the subs I frequent and the vast bulk of these are certainly not formed to ridicule this sub.

Gladio, P2, Baeder Meinhoff, not simple and not a nice world.

stupid evil people playing stupid evil games.

there should be international treaties and a cessation to these nasty games, the World might become a much nicer place.

This is not true. The early Internet, before the web, ie no HTML web sites, was all about information sharing. Pretty much everyone who was online back in those days was 2 things, a.) an adult and b.) very technologically literate. In stark contrast to the internet of today is dominated by the web infested with technologically illiterate adolescents. The web was invented, HTML 1.0, Lynx, all that good stuff.. Some people made web sites while the rest of us cynics laughed at this whole new "web" thing thinking it was doomed to fail. The biggest security threat on the early Internet was basically hobbyist hackers doing their thing. Think of the Morris worm for example. Eventually the corporations moved in. Once that happened shit really started to take off. Enter eCommerce. Enter grandma and that snot nose kid next door. This is the beginning of the end. With all that money comes Internet criminals trying to steal and scam it. These hackers continue to develop their skills. They make more money and invest in more sophisticated attacks. By the late 1990's or early 2000's the Internet started to become militarized. However it wasn't until about 2007 or so that the full blown information warfare style manipulations of social media really blew up. The primary threat actors on the net today are nation state sponsored. That doesn't mean the criminals aren't still doing their thing, and it doesn't mean the hobbyist aren't still doing their thing, but they're in the background now as far as threats the Internet at large faces. Today is an age of a new Manhattan project. The same vigor nation states applied in developing nuclear weapons in the context of kinetic war is being applied to developing 'end-game' cyber weapons. As they said in the Matrix, "Welcome to the real world."