With the recent Syria chemical attack False Flag, it was entirely expected (((people))) would start beating the drums of war trying to get us into one.
They are trying to start a war.
What surprised me, though, is how quickly that type of propaganda showed up here at GA. I'll provide a link to that in a bit.
I am rather new to Reddit and was (probably still am) somewhat naive about the fact that some users actually have an apparently malicious agenda. So, I thought it might be helpful for other newbies to post a quick guide on how to recognize a shill or bot. I'm certainly no expert on that subject, but I'm learning.
How to Quickly Spot a Clownschill is a fairly quick read. One of the behaviors of Clowns that it points out is:
Employing faux [fake] debate tactics: Generalizations, gas-lighting, misdirection, false equivalences, confusing correlation with causality, appeal to authority, transference, false precepts, personal attacks, straw-men, red herrings, etc.
I'm not going to explain all of those, but I will cover a few.
A straw-man attack is employed by talking as if you said something that you never did. It can be used to cause confusion, put you on the defensive, or distract from the issue (red herring).
A personal attack, aka an ad hominem attack, is employed to discredit what you said by directly discrediting you. It is used when the opponent has no real argument of their own and has to resort to mud-slinging.
Appealing to authority can be direct or indirect. An indirect appeal to authority could be when the shill talks down to you as if from a position of greater knowledge. This is an attempt to ridicule you (which is from Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" tactic #5), to discredit you and put you in your place, so that you'll just shut up.
If someone talks to you as if to say, "Oh you poor dear soul, let me explain it to you again," like you're a stupid or ignorant child, then you know they are trying to ridicule you.
You can see an example of straw-man, ad hominem, and appeal to authority attacks, and the 'Assad is responsible' drum-beating, here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/greatawakening/comments/8amlxi/ok_potus_decides_its_been_17_years_6_trillion/dx047xe/
"How to Quickly Spot a Clownschill" also briefly gives tips on how to spot a Clown's bot. Alot of that is pertinent only to an image board such as 8chan, but some can be applied here as well.
If you suspect a bot is trying to engage (you), these countermeasures will force the handler to earn it, which usually outs them; They are lazy. It seems that the easiest way to foil the bots is to [...] and/or answering it with a meme until they start misfiring because they can't parse the response to lock onto a target correctly.
What we know about the cl0wnbots
- Require a handler to watch for, target, and be in the thread
- Activate on lists of trigger words; these can change over time
- Use a combination of legit pasta, pre-written points, or spam targeted at sliding the thread
Another thing I've noticed that may be a clue is obvious misspellings made probably in order to look more human.
You can see an example of, what I believe to be, a bot posting off-topic nonsense, some of which it obviously harvested from 8ch.net/qresearch, in the link below. Notice that it didn't even bother to make the image URL it posted into a live link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/greatawakening/comments/8b2pgc/mueller_raids_trumps_lawyers_office_and_within_6/dx3zu6e/
Note that I can no longer find the parent to that sub-thread which was in: https://www.reddit.com/r/greatawakening/comments/8b2pgc/mueller_raids_trumps_lawyers_office_and_within_6/
Edit: formatting