Subreddits like /r/conspiracy are information prisons, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and should only be browsed minimally. The bulk of your time on Reddit would be better spent in defaults and other regular subs.

68  2016-08-14 by NutritionResearch

I'm a bit guilty of this myself sometimes. Basically, if you are spending all of your energy in a niche sub, and shills spend their energy in the mains, we are losing momentum.

We have all heard the phrase "/r/conspiracy is leaking." This causes me to consider the possibility that there is some mechanism to corral people like us into these niche subreddits.

Check this out:

"Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream -- people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc). The goal is to keep opinions we don't want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can, at which points they've gotten a head start on going viral and tend to capture a larger-than-otherwise share of media attention."

Assuming that you are an "influential" truth teller, maybe your experience in the defaults is deliberately made to be awful. After a few awful sessions with the shills in the defaults, and a few days spent in /r/conspiracy where you are allowed a dopamine release, you will seek out that dopamine high in designated information prisons. Maybe there are shills who deliberately befriend specific people and attempt to bring them to places like this.

Social media, including Reddit, has been heavily studied in the last few years. What you think of as a forum where people can shitpost for lulz, other parties think of it as a sophisticated propaganda tool. They have it down to a science.

See this:

US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research

The project list includes a study of how activists with the Occupy movement used Twitter as well as a range of research on tracking internet memes and some about understanding how influence behaviour (liking, following, retweeting) happens on a range of popular social media platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, Kickstarter, Digg and Reddit.

What about upvotes? Do they matter?

Researchers manipulated the pictures supposedly taken by the friends of the teenagers so adolescents saw different pictures that were supposedly popular. So you might see a picture and see that it had 50 likes, and I might see the very same picture and see that it received only five likes. The brains of the teenagers responded very strongly to the pictures deemed popular, regardless of which pictures they were. In fact, the researchers asked the adolescents to themselves like photos that they admired. And they found that if a teen saw a picture with lots of likes, she tended to like it herself. If another teen saw the same picture with only a few likes, he tended not to like it himself.

This all sounds so intimidating. Is there hope?

I think so. I believe that most people understand truth when they see it.

From an unamed /r/conspiracy user some years ago: "It takes a lot of effort to extinguish all of the candles in a room, but all it takes is one candle to relight them all."

You can undo all of the conditioning and propaganda for 10's of thousands of people with a single lucky comment or post. We just have to hope that "they" will never gain 100 percent control of the information flow.

Now that we understand what we are up against, how to proceed?

Regularly visit /r/all. Sort by top/this hour. There, you will see the most likely posts to hit the front page within an hour or three. An early comment on a post is much more likely to remain in the top of the comments section. Don't forget that most people only read the top few comments (just like they only read the first page of a google search). Spend your time wisely.

The amount of upvotes on a post is misleading. A post that hits the front page of /r/all will be viewed by a hundred thousand to a million people. This is a known figure going by the view count on imgur. I've seen imgur links that get uploaded, posted to Reddit within minutes, hit the front page, and the view counter reads 1 million after being on the front page for a few hours.

Maybe you see a thread that would make it easy to segue a little truth under the top comment.

Maybe you have a youtube account and there is a youtube link on the front page. A comment on that video would get a lot of views.

Do you guys have any ideas?

23 comments

14  NZ_NZ 2016-08-14

not even people in the heirarchy know the whole story.

one good example is when president Jimmy Carter is denied by the CIA to view files about Zeta Reticuleans. by telling him that he has no sufficient clearance.

but this single frame might be quite accurate to depict who runs our world

in order of importance:

1) Lord Jacob de Rothschild 2) His son Nathaniel 3) Baron John de Rothschild 4) Sir Evelyn de Rothschild 5) David Rockefeller 6) Nathan Warburg 7) Henry Kissinger 8) George Soros 9) Paul Volcker 10) Larry Summers 11) Lloyd Blankfein 12) Ben Bernanke

called the high committee of 13. mentioned too in Brice Taylor's book. yet I have no idea who the 13th member is.

2  Putin_loves_cats 2016-08-14

Partially true..

These people work for the higher echelons of the pyramid (Black Pope, Vatican, Black Nobility, The Crown, and Swiss (Venetian) Templars/Bankers).

1  NZ_NZ 2016-08-14

you are correct my friend. the Black Pope is the Pindar.

it checks out. Superior General. General Dynamics. General Electric.

obviously they left him out to throw us out of the loop.

1  White_N_Gold 2016-08-14

Why is Bernanke in it...

-4  [deleted] 2016-08-14

[deleted]

6  Yankeehero 2016-08-14

Yeah but they're has been a rising legitimate interest in our sub lately. I've been seeing more and more comments in r/worldnews and r/politics that are open to conspiracy theories or outright talk about northwoods or nwo or bilderberg group or something. If we can work to make our sub more welcoming, more sane and backed by good sources, that could help alot in walking people up.

5  RoninSinceBirth 2016-08-14

I'm a once-a-month lurker myself. Too depressing, overwhelming & distracting.

I come here just often enough; and read just enough - to remind myself who the enemies are and that it's always an uphill losing battle.

5  polkadotgirl 2016-08-14

This was really well-written. I'll try to venture out a little more. One time I got like 300 upvotes in /r/advice animals about the government spying and our desensitization to it, so you never know!

7  NutritionResearch 2016-08-14

Someone today ruined the /r/science thread on chemtrails by spreading knowledge of historical chemtrail facts (unless the mods remove it). It can be done!

https://np.reddit.com/r/science/comments/4xnpwi/chemtrails_not_real_say_atmospheric_science/?st=irutxz1e&sh=8eff41da

Edit: actually the mods removed the entire thread.

5  polkadotgirl 2016-08-14

Awesome!

I am finding more and more trolls/shills specifically following my posts.

It can be intimidating but I'm over it. They keep saying that I'm crazy and psychotic. Like literally look at my history. It is mostly harmless.

I figure I got haters for a reason, right?

4  NutritionResearch 2016-08-14

That's the spirit!

3  AdviseMyAdvice 2016-08-14

I upvoted your post because I think it's important to get involved in new posts, but I somewhat disagree that trying to fight the shills is necessary in /r/politics. /r/the_donald has less subscribers than /r/conspiracy does and they end up on the front page all the time, albeit less so after the algorithm changes.

2  Lb3pHj 2016-08-14

I like being in the know. This post reminds me of the post telling us to filter out all information regarding presidents and leaks to return Reddit to normal. Nothing to see here folks!

12  Nandinia_binotata 2016-08-14

No. This post is telling you if you want to make a difference, you need to post the truth in more places than just this sub.

By only posting here, you are playing into their intentional compartmentalization. There is a great Bill Hicks sketch that talks on this in regards to marketing.

3  Lb3pHj 2016-08-14

That makes sense. I'm sorry.

7  Nandinia_binotata 2016-08-14

There's no reason to apologize. You have woken up against a cognitive misstep.

We're naturally drawn to echo chambers and tribalism, especially in the face of adversity. It's important to remember we're one mankind fighting against our own enslavement. We don't all agree on what the cause is or even how to get out but we all want to be free from this abuse.

2  kerrymti1 2016-08-14

Well written, good advice. I will try to do as you suggest, it is a good idea. Thanks.

2  democracystrikesback 2016-08-14

sheeple are sheeple.

i gave up trying to force the comatose to awaken long ago. having said that; if you are going to try the best way is to plant seeds, create cracks, or chip a little off, not scream in their faces. pricking reality bubbles in the mains might be worth a try - if you have the time/energy and stomach for it.

1  plato_thyself 2016-08-14

Great post! And thanks for continuing to fight the good fight /u/NutritionResearch. I sincerely appreciate all of your efforts.

1  Wood_Warden 2016-08-14

There are plenty of great alternative sources and forums like: Truthdig, The Corbett Report, Progressive Radio Network, Red Ice Creations and tons of Youtube channels etc.

-2  [deleted] 2016-08-14

Odd post. So you exposed a strategy. Pretty cool. Then again your headline is fear mongering- not cool.