Paranoid Conspiracies

Sockpuppeting obviously sometimes happens, but at the worst it's irritating. It's not the end of the world. We don't need to have screeching meltdowns about it.

My paranoid conspiracy theory is that when people start morbid discussions about suicide, asking for stories or dwelling on it in some way, that they're intentionally goading suggestible people into suicide attempts.

r2 I can believe that.

There’s this annoying bitch from our old neighborhood. I swear she posts things on the neighborhood Facebook page just to annoy me. But then it occurred to me today she has many other enemies, so she could just as easily be taunting them.

Pickleball isn't fun. It feels like something an elementary school gym teacher came up with at the last minute on a rainy day to keep the kids busy. It isn't right. They're up to something.

We studied that episode in elementary school, R3. We were learning about the Cold War and it was supposed to help explain it to us.

r7 I believe it. It's an episode that truly can stand the test of time. Just brilliant writing from Serling. Period.

Everything being the fault of Satanists is the funnest conspiracy. Have you guys heard of the supposed Hillary Clinton/ Huma Abedin video "frazzledrip"?

I've never understood who has time for sockpuppets or how they keep them straight. Spreadsheets?

R5 I bet she gets some sick satisfaction out of it, too. Fabulous Frau bitch.

R9 A sex tape?

I think OP needs to take his sock puppets and red pencils, and schedule an appointment with Dr. Marlene Evans.

I personally know a couple of people who enjoy puppeting and they're psycho losers with no lives, R10. They keep notes, spreadsheets, and hundreds of tabs open. They think they're NASA when they're just borderline.

Hate conspiracy theorists. They all need medication.

R10 A virtual desktop works wond.... I mean, who knows, who knows?

R14 they openly talk about this? They do it voluntarily without being paid?

He was very politically prescient, R8. He was also very good at building pathos with the characters. You were always living their situation with them.

I suspect the Spanish Inquisition is up to its old tricks.

Hillary Clinton is hidin' under mah SINK!

When I was in high school and being bullied, I thought my small hick town must surely be a coven of Devil-worshipers. It was during the 'Satanic Panic' of the 70s - 80s, and several young people had 'committed suicide' or been outright murdered in the area. Drugs were rampant. One classmate who supposedly hung himself was rumored to have been covered in witchy graffiti.

R16, yes. The ones I know did. They thought it was cool/funny. Like most mentally ill people, they didn't see how dumb, distasteful, and abnormal their behavior was. Or they did but got off on offending people.

Either way? Disgusting humans.

I've been here since 1995. Gay, white, almost 60, and a known troll is convinced I'm running socks and one of them is a "Black Millenial". It's funny because he's convinced I'm a totally different posters. He's talking to different people thinking they are all one and the same. It's quite funny but at the same time I have to question his sanity.

I hate conspiracies too but when I was doing drugs in my twenties I became convinced everyone else was a pod person like in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.

Now I only think Republicans are.

He's harmless and sometimes very thoughtful and kind, R22, but that's an incredibly irritating habit and served as the inspiration for this thread.

He's also long winded and speaks rather pompously R24. I've tried blocking it but it's not working. Not sure if Muriel needs to fix that little issue or if it's on my end. Blocked him yesterday for his nonsensical accusations but he was back this morning.

R20 This sounds like the South.

THEY LIVE is available to watch on tubi. It's a favorite film of mine and very gay.

r22 I know exactly who you're talking about because he's done it to me several times but I actually am Black and a millennial but a female. There is (or was) a gay Black guy around my age on here who signed all of his posts "Black Millennial" who I made the "grave mistake" of agreeing with on certain issues affecting our community and people.

He is convinced we are the same person because...of course, the only two admitted Black people co-signing each other's opinions on Black issues on a site used mostly by Whites are the same person. Of course, we are. /s

r24 I didn't have a problem with him either until he started doing this and it, lowkey, bothered me a bit because, at the end of the day, the main reason he thinks we're the same person is because we're Black. He has accused me of "faking being Black" because of my views on certain issues in my community. But...[bold]he's White[/bold].

It's like a digital version of "All of [italic]you people[/italic] look alike." Just replace the word "look" with "think" and you have the problematic mentality that PD has. It's beyond an "irritating habit." He's using a racial dog whistle to mock/condescend people's posts. I'm at a point where I think it's deliberately being done to antagonize users. That is the very definition of trolling.

R28 I ended up having to block him, he's not an evil person but he has such hard line attitudes he can't just live and let live. Very prone, like you said, to black and white thinking- both literally and figuratively.

Pretty astonishing arrogance to assume that if someone steps a toe away from the party line that they can't possibly be gay, or black, or a liberal, etc. Feels like shit being hemmed in by clueless people who claim to support you. I guess if I was a master of the universe who had all the answers I'd start ordering everybody around too. Who knows?

Also- paranoid conspiracy theory incoming!

The troll hunters are themselves trolling- shutting down conversations they don't want occurring and targeting posters they see as potential threats to their control.

I believe the current inflation/post-pandemic situation in the U.S. has been artificially extended to benefit corporations. And corporations are using every excuse to cut corners, produce inferior products, and cheat consumers.

Hotels aren't even bothering to change the sheets anymore.

R30 truly what I think that PD troll is trying to do. He's hijacking threads with his petty arguments. Disagreement over a minor POV. He can't take any disagreement without pulling out the "you're a sock puppet and I have proof" which he doesn't but he'll insist you said this and that on this date and it's still nothing you ever said. Big time troll.

That anyone who doesn’t 100% agree with you on datalounge is a Russian agent trying to end the greatness of the USA.

It's funny. You can read all sorts of intelligent posts by someone and start to like his or her posts, but then you go into a JFK assassination conspiracy thread or a 9/11 thread and you find out that poster is a conspiracy nutjob. So disappointing.

Crazy isn't it R35? The BRF/MM threads killed any like I may have had for a lot of posters. Perfectly reasonable on one thread then ranting about "mooghan" laundering money for Russians and singlehandedly destroying the universe while being so hideously ugly and cloven footed. They come across as insanely jealous 12 year olds.

r35 I typically have no problems with engaging with posters when I wholly disagree with them on certain issues. It's when they blatantly start using tactics to derail a conversation with vapid personal attacks or the "sock puppet/troll" accusations that I disengage. If it continues, then I block because, at that point, engagement/discourse is just no longer possible, anyway. And I just assume they don't want it to be possible, hence the behavior.

r22/r25/r28 the troll in question was just in the thread about the Irish psychic. The level of batshittery was even more than usual. There's something seriously wrong with him. Like, "the men in white coats should come and take him away" kind of seriously wrong. Of all the crazy trolls on DL over the years, I've never seen anything at the level he's at.

The Irish psychic? Now I am curious.

Sorry r39, it was the Olivia Hussey thread where the troll in question was even more batshit than ever (don't type his name because he apparently monitors this board for his name in threads and will appear within minutes). Starts at r158.

So sorry, here's the Olivia Hussey thread....

Quite apart from the/those strange DL'ers mentioned above, I always had a question for the people who believed the world was controlled by the Pope, the Queen of England, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, George Soros, Henry Kissinger, and the Masons.

How could they all be in the same room at the same time let alone work together to run the world? They're not natural allies.

Thanks r40

With so many options out there, OP should have been able to put in a full set. “Deep State”, “the Russians”, and “Soros” are several additional ones that immediately come to mind.

That Olivia Hussey thread is quite something.

[quote]R45: That Olivia Hussey thread is quite something.

Yes, isn't it? My own original post on that thread was Reply 83, and somebody really objected to my presence on the thread, opening a series of strafing attacks using several accounts. At Reply 193, I listed the participation of three separate accounts, one of which was the account on this thread that posted R38, R40, and R41.

Apparently dissatisfied with the attack on the 'OLIVIA HUSSEY' thread, the sock user attempted at least twice to carry his grievance to a call-out thread he started in order to try to re-litigate it all (𝐎𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐋 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐲? 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐲? 𝐖𝐞𝐢𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭?). But those kinds of threads are generally not permitted here, and it was deleted in short order.

Now, he's trying to mount a discussion of it here, on an old call-out thread from May of 2023 that was started over an argument on the 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫'𝐬 "𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞" (𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟖) from the same time (linked below). Again, the object is to bitch about me - see R28 et al, in this thread.

Ironic, though - R28 is describing itself as the poster we now know as 𝐦𝐚𝐨, who just got finished posting a New Year's Eve rant, where it announced that it was leaving the Data Lounge - and in passing, admitted to using a sock account. (See the 𝐃𝐋 - 𝐈𝐧 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐦 thread, Reply 33). And remarkably, the account that posted R28 does not appear to be the same as either of those two accounts, 'mao' or 'labyrinth.' This would be a third sock to that same user.

[quote]R38: the troll in question was just in the thread about the Irish psychic. The level of batshittery was even more than usual. There's something seriously wrong with him. Like, "the men in white coats should come and take him away" kind of seriously wrong. Of all the crazy trolls on DL over the years, I've never seen anything at the level he's at.

Um, that would be the 𝐌𝐚𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐮𝐢𝐠𝐢 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 thread, where this particular user account mentioned my name out of the blue, apropos nothing at all, at Reply 28:

[quote]The anti-DM queen is almost in Poisoned Dragon nutcase territory. Almost.

I wasn't participating in that thread at all up to that point. Nor do I 'monitor this board for my name in threads and will appear within minutes'; I was randomly browsing the DL, and the thread in question was currently active, bumped to the top of the queue, and I saw this user citing my name, apparently for no other reason than that he is obsessed with me (review his posting history, and you'll see).

The one thing all of the sock accounts have in common is attacking my mental health, screaming that I'm a nut. They don't realize it's what gives them away. They're never original or innovative; it's always the same thing. And it's been going on for - what? four or five years now.

Reading the 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫'𝐬 "𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞" (𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟖) thread would be instructive, as far as the state of the argument goes. It usually runs like this: Socktroll starts thread, uses sock accounts to try to control the discussion. I post an opinion, and the socktroll loses its shit, tying up the entire rest of the thread in repeated attacks on me. He simply cannot let it go, and is willing to expose multiple accounts repeating his tropes: 'Let it go!' 'JFC, you need to breathe and take your meds and go outside.' 'Go outside and touch grass!' 'Just kill yourself PD.' 'Poisoned Dragon is clearly autistic AND a social retard' 'PD, let it go. This obsession looks unhinged. It’s unhealthy and turning into troll-like behavior.'

[quote]My paranoid conspiracy theory is that when people start morbid discussions about suicide, asking for stories or dwelling on it in some way, they're intentionally goading suggestible people into suicide attempts.

This works for lots of stuff.

It starts with discussions about some terrible person who has done horrible things and someone should do something about them. Using a botnet to amplify messages across multiple platforms, algorithms display these posts and threads to individuals already identified as vulnerable: a shooting occurs!

r2 - you aren't being paranoid.

The OP of this thread, mao, poisoned dragon, black millennial, anybody who calls herself a psychic ... these are all the same tired troll who "talks to itself - a lot".

This thread is nearly just the same 2 posters replying to each other.

I have heard rumors from various podcasts that isis and al qaeda have operatives spread thought the country to attack various areas through out the country. I hope this is wrong but it would cause havoc.