On point as always. I keep trying to describe the organized and constant shit-flinging of the desperate people as "psy-ops", but gaslighting is more accurate.

It's intentional, however, at this point, when the propaganda is so obvious I think it's doing a better job to harden people against the attacks then it is to bring them to their way of thinking.

Nailed it.

You have to ask, who benefits from disparaging this sub? It’s not the regular users who have a genuine conspiracy interest. To anyone visiting, upvotes to the kind of comment you mention would have you believe that long term users believe the sub is T_D 2.0, they complain about it and yet receive upvotes (contradicting their tenuous point).

It’s been happening for a while and anyone who sticks around sees it before long.

If you ask yourself who benefits from disparaging this sub but don't also ask who benefits from perpetuating theories on it, you're selectively applying logic here.

Further reading (just wikipedia) on the subject, which derives its name from the 1944 film Gas Light. For the perhaps not yet informed

Well that changes the band name the gaslight anthem for me.

There are four lights!

r/StarTrek is leaking...

In the context of the internet and anonymous people, there is "Astro-turfing" which is basically like gas-lighting, but on a large scale with the purpose of shaping public opinion.

It basically means paid trolls who gaslight.

https://experiencelife.com/article/turf-wars/

There are tons of trolls/bots/gaslighters/astroturfers on this sub. I don't know how it used to be before because I'm fairly new to the conspiracy sub. I came around right around the same time that Pizzagate was starting, and there is definitely a lot more Trump/hillary banter than there was back then. It's like all the trolls came from politics and are stuck in 2016. I personally think that the Pizzagate researchers were probably too on the nose with some of the stuff they put together and it freaked out whoever has enough money to pay for a crap ton of bots.

It's super weird how people will bash theories or use mainstream sources to validate their bashing. It is for sure gaslighting. They want people to think their own critical thoughts are stupid and invalid.

I think there are actual paid bots, and then the even sadder people who have been unknowingly programmed by msm and basically society. Gaslighting is how we got to where we are as far as our backwards society (think about gender relations, race relations, economic relations) and it's been exciting to see people starting to wake up. Once you realize everything is a lie, you become more confident in yourself because you realize that no one is trying to fix any problems so you're already ahead of the game by being smart enough to realize that there are major problems and they are fixable.

This sub didn't used to be all politics all the time. I might chalk part of that up to the news cycle being filled up nothing but politics for the last two years solid, but there's definitely been a shift away from other discussions.

Conspiracy stuff will almost always have at least some political bent, but this sub did used to have some really interesting “revisionist history” type discussions where you learned different perspectives on commonly held assumptions about historical events. Thems were the good ol’ days though.

I learned so much back in those days, it was great.

Gaslighting is all that happens around here these days.

Excellent link, thanks. We knew that but the article gives a lot more than I was aware of.

At this point I pretty much do not trust anything its getting fucking ridiculous

This sub is supposed to be ridiculous, take none of it seriously and you will enjoy it more.

The Reddit hivemind has been insisting for years that this sub is ridiculous, that's it's the laughing stock, that it's racist, that it's full of schizophrenic people etc etc etc.

Wasn't true then and it's not true now.

It is a bit silly at times.

Sure it is, but that's not it's identity.

I just come here for entertainment, ufos, 911, pizzagate, flat earth, chemtrails, etc.It’s just a fun comic book to me. And that is the bulk of the posts on this sub.

It's both sides. There threads for both sides to feel comfortable. Here is a thread from hot right now.

https://www.np.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/7lbwkq/ummm/

Tell me how a conspiracy sub is upvoting a link directly from the white house?

Because the beauty of this sub is if you approach from the right, or left, there is a thread for you.

By this definition telling a schizophrenic patient that he's hallucinating would be gaslighting.

Sometimes "the reality you are experiencing" isn't the real one

So by gaslighting you mean lying.

Yes, but a concerted effort typically involving multiple perpetrators.

So you mean like the people pushing PG?

Disgusting

Why are you using that one thread as your entire evidence that there is no gaslighting occurring here?

You make the claim, you provide the evidence.

Basically, he's gaslighting.

So that's why people think the earth is a globe?

Because I certainly haven't seen the earth's curve or felt any spinning lol.

What should one believe indeed?

I like to think of this sub as being the battle ground of reddit

Gaslighting isn't the term you're looking for.

The term gets used wrong really often but OP's link does give a better understanding.

Say you start dating someone and they're all into you. Then one day, they just get cold and you feel like you did something wrong. They don't tell you what you did, so you get insecure and try to please them, and they take advantage of that.

It's a form of psychological manipulation but not really the same as what OP is talking about.

Read up on the Overton Window.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

The window of discourse is the range of topics people can talk about.

There's also the selective exposure theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_exposure_theory

There's a bunch of related psychological theories for this kind of stuff.

I just wouldn't call it gaslighting in the traditional sense. It's definitely subversive and designed to create distrust within the community though by making people think the other side is doing shady stuff behind people's backs.

In a way its kind of people gaslighting themselves, because we choose to be here.

Yeah that's not gaslighting.

Gaslighting would be if you wore a blue shirt at your wedding, and years later your wife tells you it's red. You disagree. She spends the next year insiting it was red. She gets her maid of honor to tell you it's red. She photoshopped the wedding pics and puts them in a frame so you can see it's red. She knows it was blue. You start to doubt your own perceptions and memories. You begin going through stress and doubt and other abuse victim type changes. You eventually cave, and begin to rely on her as the ultimate arbiter of truth, even if what she tells you contradicts your knowledge, memory, vision, and reality.

She has gaslighted you.

I've seen both in the short time I have been here. This is my second favorite sub so far, the first is UFOs. Im sure gaslighting is happening on two popular subs, I subbed to both them. I figure I find a bit of the tru tru that way.

So ... Trumpisms, then?

Precisely.

Aren't you gaslighting by this very post...?

Well you've refused to provide evidence, and expect people to believe you based on your opinion.

Frankly I don't know if you're right or not, but what I do know is that for me to believe either side I'd like to be presented with some sort of evidence.

After all, isn't that what it's meant to be about? Otherwise you are doing exactly what you are accusing others of.

What you need to know is that as someone who has frequented the SandersSub, TrumpSub, Politics, and here for well over a year now, I can tell you that this is still the most level-headed group in existence. Honestly, it's kind of a balanced grab bag of Trump Supporters, Sanders Supporters, Paranoids, Schiozos, Skeptics, Conspiracy Theorists, New Agers, and Truthseekers. Some subs like T_D are the way they are bc if they let in anyone that questioned anything Trump does, they could be seen as Gaslighting, so it's a way to keep out the baddies. With that said, I think you are in good hands here - just realize that all subs have a few shitdick Mods who like to vote shift, so be sure to sort by New every so often and contribute to content that is relevant to you.

Ahhhhh... makes sense. Didn't know and cared less. Yes, but Truth reverberates.

Not sure about this, OP, but did you hear they opened some new Aldi stores in the US?

Ze Germans!

This shit again. Just because sometimes posts which go against the alt right make it to the top and sometimes the comments are predominantly against the alt right narrative, does not mean that TD views are not massively overrepresented here. Try viewing top posts for the year and comparing how many non conspiracies and obvious bullshit are in there for alt right vs against.

Yes. These people follow directives well.

They think they are part of some solution.

No one ever solved anything by being a whore for the Republicans or the Democrats.

Thanks for your effort to describe some truth.

Politics is not a religion. Sometimes I think a comment on T_D is clever or good. It happens. But personally, I'm as left as any Bernie bro. What's creepy are the SJW's who trawl through my history to declare me a Trumpite because I refused to renounce everything he says.

Serious question. How can you be a conspiracy theorist, and be a leftist? You want to give the state more control? Isn't that antithesis to what you should want as someone who has studied conspiricies. I meet Conspiracy theorists in real life and pretty much all of them is a very anti-government, libertarian type political philosophy. Only on the internet do I find leftists that are into conspiricies.

Just some thoughts, would like to get your point of view. I'm intrigued.

I’m far from a leftist but I’d presume that they don’t dislike government but are conspiracy theorists because they think our government (past and current included) has been engaged in shadowy and shady actions and constantly lies to us. They want a government that doesn’t do those things, and think such a government is possible. The difference is that libertarians (like myself) think that such opaque behavior is an intrinsic aspect of government power and thus we should be skeptical of all government, period.

That’s just my speculation.

That's spot on probably. People have this bullshit propaganda view of what government is and it's role. They can't see it for what it is. A centralized ruling class that is there to protect only the ruling class and their power base.

Funnily enough OP is a t_d poster.

Welcome to my resignation.

Gaslighting:

You are living on a spinning ball that is whipping around holding all the ocean's waters to it while allowing bumblebees to fly which has an open atmosphere adjacent to a pure vacuum of ever expanding space.

Precisely.