I'd say it's intentional and targeted disruption to divide the subreddit and make it less effective.

People scream, "persecution complex" because they know that conspiracy theorists are already discredited very easily by ad hominem attacks.

The truth is that there is a group of people that seeks to, and I believe enjoys to, discredit/disorganize this subreddit and that's what you're noticing

It is solely because of shills. If you say something that seems to be an attempt to dissuade a plausible theory, many people will assume at once that you are a shill and have been paid to say that, thus you don't belong.

This occurs not because readers here don't like other opinions or critical viewpoints (its the whole point of the sub really), but because there ARE an astonishingly large amount of ACTUAL shills on here all the time. Calling them out is the only way to get rid of them.

Secondly, all of the best theories and posts here are based on FACTS. Cold hard evidence are the main factors in these debates, so if someone comes on here with a dissenting viewpoint and FACTS they would be welcomed and listened to.

Reason is what makes this sub so popular. Even if your viewpoint is the polar opposite of the most popular, if you have FACTS and REASON behind your claim, you will be welcomed.

Yes, people are actually paid to post nonsense. It's well-documented.

http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1v1ggh/exposing_cyber_shills_and_social_medias_underworld/

I would consider a shill as anyone who can personally profit through misinformation and slowing down critical thinking. Basically the lowest of the low scumbags whose pathetic lives are so shitty or fucked up that they choose money over knowledge or public awareness.

Most shills have no idea what kind of impact their misinformation campaigns will have on the future. They don't care. They want money. It's sad to say but truthfully, if they all killed themselves the world would be a much more productive and happy place, who knows what we could achieve.

Because people come in here and try to rile up our users into thinking there's some bullshit going on. Your post is a great example. You make accusations about the user base and towards the mods at the same time.

Bravo. I bet you will have a well rounded conversation with people in here with that attitude..

But seriously... what's your real motivation here? I doubt you are being very truthful in your account. For instance, I don't believe that your perfect user name and 4 month old "clean" account are just coincidence. Nor do I believe your nicely worded self submission is any where true to your actual intent.

I'd suggest you just move along and forget you were here. I'll not engage you further.

Gosh, I never called you a shill.

The first sentence of that user's first comment is ironic.

If you understand how it is irony you'll understand the implication.

[deleted]

They said particularly not specifically.

[deleted]

The way it reads, it looks like he's trying to plant the idea that this sub has a major problem that is specific to it,

It does.

[deleted]

And to be honest, I think the name callling comes from the "non-conspiracy" side about twice as often as the conspiracy theorists.

Conspiracy nut, nutcase, tinfoiler, birther, 9/11 truther, paranoid schitzophrenic, idiot, conspiratard, delusional, etc.

Of course some people who are conspiracy theorists call others names, like shill and sheep, but my honest opinion is that this is about half as much as the opposing side. There was even a study that came out about this.

Finally, conventionalist arguments tended to have a more hostile tone.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23847577

About Sandy Hook: "You sick fuck, kids died man!"

About the Boston Bombings: "Can't you just fucking leave people alone?"

About 9/11, right after it happened: "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists," - George Bush. Others would say you're unamerican, unpatriotic, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aYZbQtCm4M

cool jumps bro

Dissenting opinions and arguments are indeed allowed, though often downvoted by other users. Those who are banned are typically in violation of one of the rules, most often attacking the sub (i.e. using inflammatory language regarding subscribers of this sub or against the sub itself), second most would probably be racism. For every one rare instance of racism I see from a member here, I see at least a dozen on average from trolls/r/conspiratard members. For most of them, it's a game, and their level of maturity allows for petty mockery over the Internet and pointless trolling to pass as a form of entertainment. If caught violating any of the rules openly displayed on the sidebar, they are banned. It has literally nothing to do with dissent. Apart from that particular community that continually "attacks" those of us here, this sub has pretty much always been a target for trolls and those with political agendas for abuse, as most opinion driven and controversial subs tend to be. One the ways to deal with this, is to ban those caught in the act of trolling when reported. Hence, the existence of Rule 10, among others.

People were getting banned from here left and right, and they hadn't even said anything here.

 9. Posting links in other subs pointing to specific submissions
    or comments here is subject to a ban, depending on context.

Stop trying to defend yourselves, it's pathetic to even be questioned why we treath you the way we do when all you guys do is mock us day and night, brigading intentionally/unintentionally, derail conversations, etc, and you wonder why there isn't any good discussions with you.

Can we please just ban r/conspiratard discussions from this sub once and for all? There is nothing worth talking about them and it only makes this sub even more trashy. Just look at the last threads with discussions like those: absolute attention-whores trash drama. Disgusting.

Not every person that got banned in the /r/subredditoftheday post broke that rule though.

Let me guess, they told you and you believe in them? There are no liars on the internet, especially those that just want to see others burn and disappear at all costs.

And it's annoying that everyone that isn't a conspiracy theorist gets lumped in with /r/conspiratard users.

It's annoying that this is what, 10th time(?) this week that you guys come here trying to infect this sub with r/tard stupidity?

That sub has nothing, I repeat, NOTHING worth discussing here in r/conspiracy. They are a circlejerck that is addicted to the things they hate the most and they get their kicks out of mocking other's beliefs.

Some of them even praise and promote violence against people that think differently.

And that sub was elected for SROTD? There's nothing there but shit, just absolute shit being thrown at others.

Keep defending them but please do it in their sub, stop with this nonsense in here, it's not even a conspiracy discussion at all.

That sub has nothing, I repeat, NOTHING worth discussing here in r/conspiracy. They are a circlejerck that is addicted to the things they hate the most and they get their kicks out of mocking other's beliefs.

I actually don't mind hearing contradictory or dissenting viewpoints, if they are presented in a manner which leads to actual discussion. I think a lot of users get tired of defending their viewpoints and just react without really thinking about what may have been presented to them.

An important thing to remember is that not all subscribers of this thread are people who believe the whacked out shit that the general population believes are involved with studying conspiracy related subjects. I tend to use this thread for finding information which may take days to sink in and make the connections. I read reuters, rt, aljazeera, etc., and I have noticed correlations to seemingly unrelated stories on different sites, sometimes weeks apart. This sub is a great pool for later looking up stories to reference which get taken off of news sites with amazingly "coincidental" timing. If a user gets harassed just for using a sub, such trolling and personal attacks get old very quickly. Instead of getting pissed and directing at the troll or dickhead, it's important to remember that division is one of the strongest social weapons available to a ruling class and not fall for it. Whether one believes what others believe or not, we're all in this shit together. The allegory of the cave is very relevant to understanding the madness that can occur when one seeks the truth, rather than what they are told to believe. Sometimes that madness leaks out into the sub, which is a shame.

One person I know personally who disagrees with many of my own viewpoints on social control/order is my father, who is smart as fuck. As in hand picked while in college to work on Gemini. Sometimes when we would discuss things he would say "yes, but do you really think that there are people who plot to control the world?" An irrefutable answer he was presented with was that yes, every "coup" which ha been related to US intel agencies is, by definition, a conspiracy to control foreign governments in order to align global power structures. If people can contribute to a dialogue instead of a pissing contest, that's when progress can be made and truth can be established.

One important thing that all people can benefit from is remembering that some people left Germany before the shit came down at the hand of Hitler. These were people who either had an inside line, or could see the forest from the trees. The ones who stood by and mocked those who left paid the ultimate price. Change of great order does not occur overnight, but slowly like individual grains of sand in the wind which one day become part of a great expanse of dunes. I for one, don't want to wonder why I am doomed to die of starvation because I stood still while a desert grew around me.

The problem is not that people disagree. The problem is how they disagree.

The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies.

As long as people come here and respectfully disagree without resorting to troll/shill tactics and without violating the rules, they are welcome. When people make snide or abusive comments about /r/conspiracy in other subs then they have no legitimate reason to want to be posting here anyway so why not ban them if we happen to run across it?

That entire thread in subredditoftheday was intended to paint /r/conspiracy in a bad light. That's what r/conspiratard does. That was the sole intention of the two top mods that created that sub. The OP of that thread, BipolarBear0, was caught red-handed making extremely racist comments and submissions in /r/conspiracy under another account name and then posting links to them in r/conspiratard pointing out how racist we were.

It may be that one of our mods got a bit carried away but we get sick and tired of the crap we have to put up with from the people in r/conspiratard. It's a never ending battle trying to defend this sub against their constant, unwarranted and underhanded attacks.

Edit: And then you come in after all the crap has died down and try to stir up trouble again... with what is obviously a sockpuppet account just like what the r/conspiratards do.

Edit 2: The only reason I'm not deleting your submission is because I want people to see the ridiculously phony "but we just disagree" BS that we regularly have to put up with.

I can't speak for the mods, but you pretty much described most of Reddit.

rather than a well-thought-out rebuttal of what that person proposes

The problem is that well-thought out rebuttals require evidence, and due the nature of conspiracy theories, forming a well-thought-out response is by definition almost impossible. When this happens what you have left are a bunch of childish people who are much more susceptible to the "us vs them" kind of mentality, and as a result downvote and insult those who would challenge their beliefs (because if you aren't "one of us" you are "one of them"). That being said, there are plenty of people here who love to have meaningful conversations about conspiracy theories and use as much evidence as they can possibly get when forming arguments and counterarguments. You just have to take the good with the bad, and unfortunately there is a much higher proportion of bad to good (in my opinion).

If you weren't rationalized into a 'belief', you can't be rationalized out.

If you are incapable of forming a logical argument in a debate, one of the few ways left to defend your 'belief' is by silencing the opposition. Anyone who disagrees is a paid shill. Shills must be silenced.

IMO the majority of the issue stems from a lack of education.

Edit: Obligatory accusations of downvote brigading taking away my sweet sweet karma.

I'm confused. You said.

If you are incapable of forming a logical argument in a debate, one of the few ways left to defend your 'belief' is by silencing the opposition.

So silencing the opposition is bad because you're incapable of forming a logical argument. Gotcha.

Anyone who disagrees is a paid shill. Shills must be silenced.

But wait. You just said silencing the opposition is bad.