I met a very pitiable professional shill last night in a neighborhood bar. A mischievous mutual acquaintance introduced me to him, hoping to spark some chaos because I was drunk and I often say incautious things when drunk. The shill was a flabby 28-year-old man who says 4chan and 8kun are the lowest sewers of disinformation and his job is to write conference papers for a non-governmental organization so that some day someone else will force the wrongthinkers to shut up.

He was quite sober, so he didn't want to discuss anything in detail. He didn't want to talk about whether George Soros bribes DAs. He didn't want to talk about whether anyone ever got assassinated. He did not claim to have any academic qualifications (e.g. statistics, history, etc.) or even any degrees. He refused to discuss how anyone could prove a given claim was disinformation.

Will this flabby 28-year-old ever be an effective anti-free-speech pawn? Maybe. Maybe he was keeping his secrets because he is smart enough to withhold information effectively. But certainly he was not charismatic. He was not a political leader. He is not likely to have any girlfriends. Any effective shilling he does will require him to hide much like anons hide, but with the advantages conferred by his NGO. He might just be a demoralized time-server who will do the bare minimum to keep his soul-destroying office job. But who knows? Maybe I am a poor judge of character. Maybe he is an ambitious Renfield type trying his best to find a Dracula to serve. Maybe he secretly holds an Ivy League degree and he was slumming it with the poor folks.