Well, I'm not sure if what this particular guy is saying is true, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there wasn't a cottage industry based on this concept thriving out there. The oddly uniform viral emails I get certainly seem to come from the same place.

I wouldn't be surprised either if it wasn't just one side or party that was doing it, but a great number of them. (Oh, yes, there are more than two sides or agendas attached to every issue. It's never black and white.) And he mentions only a specific political issue. I'm sure there are commercial and religious operations like that out there as well. They can not only inhabit neutral sites to change opinions and rebut articulate spokesmen for the other side, but also these people can troll partisan sites and make real pests of themselves, cause trouble and dissension, and drive people off by insults and sheer nastyness.

I've always felt the Zone would attract these kind of people, particularly when it was open enrollment, and frequented by many people in the space community, some of then even well-known influential personalities. And the anonymity involved is an open invitation to black propagandists. (No, I'm not talking about TB. We all know his identity, he's legit.)

I've always suspected on of our old posters here (he no longer comes around much) was a black propagandist. He left around the time enrollment was closed. This guy pretended to be a highly partisan conservative, but the man was really obnoxious and insulting, a real prick. So his visits tended to discredit conservatives rather than support conservative positions. He was obviously smart and well educated, a good writer, but he claimed to follow some really anomalistic beliefs that would have thoroughly discredited his politics in a science-oriented chat room. I always suspected he was actually a Lefty pretending to be a Righty, trying to make Conservatives look bad. I even told him so once, shortly before he disappeared. (No, I don't think I got to him, but the Zone was going into decline and it was no longer cost-effective for him to work the place.) Fear not, everybody here now is a genuine asshole, not a phony one.

Of course, this is America, and every form of skulduggery can be commercialized. Not only are there probably consultants out there peddling snake oil, I bet some of them will will work for either side of an issue, or even both sides simultaneously! All they are in it for is the money. You know, like advertising agencies and lawyers.