Paid shills

[Jack4jill]

Making them media fed kooks. The worst kind of kooks, but still one step up from the shill.

I shill for no man, but if you have a big enough check, I'll consider the matter.

 

[Jack4jill]

Your misdirection skills are so poor I can't see how you keep your shill job unless you have other skills they desire.

It's not hard, to keep a job you never had.

 

[miketx]

Ok, so a woman pays you. Candycorn? If so, you fixin' to get fired 'cause you been caught.

It's not hard, to keep a job you never had.

 

[Jack4jill]

Ok, so a woman pays you. Candycorn? If so, you fixin' to get fired 'cause you been caught.

My main clients are aliens from the planet Kolob, and underwear gnomes.

Every 29.5 days I do 'What is the new moon thing anyway?', and every 21 days I do "I have cramps so get me ice cream, now!". That's really all I can manage without more staff.

 

[miketx]

Someone pays you that's for sure, because no one can be this stupid.

 

[Jack4jill]

Someone pays you that's for sure, because no one can be this stupid.

The boss just rated one of my post as funny.

I'd better get back to pumping "Those things in the sky are just big magical crows bringing you Girl Scout cookies, not black helicopters full of jackbooted thugs coming for your guns and daughters".

Did you know, Girl Scout cookies turn you into lesbians? It's a fact. I read it on the Internet.

 

[HUGGY]

MikeTX seems desperate to get attention. Posting this story that is not his/hers/it's own as if it were is pathetic.

Should have changed it up to make it more believable. The date in the story is too dated. There is too much information. Too much irrelevant detail. The kicker, for me, is that there was no mention of pay which would have drawn people in...not to mention that the style is nothing like Mikey's posts. He/she/it should really have posted this OP as a sock.

Cut and paste is a lazy way to get attention. If someone is crying out for attention I want to see real tears thank you.

 

[miketx]

MikeTX seems desperate to get attention. Posting this story that is not his/hers/it's own as if it were is pathetic.

Should have changed it up to make it more believable. The date in the story is too dated. There is too much information. Too much irrelevant detail. The kicker, for me, is that there was no mention of pay which would have drawn people in...not to mention that the style is nothing like Mikey's posts. He/she/it should really have posted this OP as a sock.

Cut and paste is a lazy way to get attention. If someone is crying out for attention I want to see real tears thank you.

Another shill. It says in black and white that it is not me. Spin spin lie gurgle...

 

[ElmerMudd]

Part 3

The second binder was smaller, and it contained information specific to the web sites I would be assigned to. The sites I would work were: Godlike Productions, Lunatic Outpost, CNN news, Yahoo News, and a handful of smaller sites that rotated depending on need. As stated, I was NOT assigned to work ATS (although others in my group were), which is part of the reason I am posting this here, rather than elsewhere. I wanted to post this on Godlike Productions at first, but they have banned me from even viewing that site for some reason (perhaps they are onto me?). But if somebody connected with this site can get the message to them, I think they should know about it, because that was the site I spent a good 70% of my time working on.

The site-specific info in the second binder included a brief history each site, including recent flame-wars, as well as info on what to avoid on each site so as not to get banned. It also had quite detailed info on the moderators and the most popular regged posters on each site: location (if known), personality type, topics of interest, background sketch, and even some notes on how to “push the psychological buttons” of different posters. Although I didn’t work for ATS, I did see they had a lot of info on your so-called “WATS” posters here (the ones with gold borders around their edges). “Focus on the popular posters,” my trainer told me. “These are the influential ones. Each of these is worth 50 to 100 of the lesser known names.”

Each popular poster was classified as “hostile,” “friendly,” or “indifferent” to my goal. We were supposed to cultivate friendship with the friendly posters as well as the mods (basically, by brownnosing and sucking up), and there were even notes on strategies for dealing with specific hostile posters. The info was pretty detailed, but not perfect in every case. “If you can convert one of the hostile posters from the enemy side to our side, you get a nice bonus. But this doesn’t happen too often, sadly. So mostly you’ll be attacking them and trying to smear them.”

At first, like I said, my job was “meme-patrol.” This was pretty simple and repetitive; it involved countering memes and introducing new memes, and didn’t demand much in-depth knowledge of the subject. Mostly just repetitive posting based on the dialogue pairs in the “Strat” section of the first binder. A lot of my job was de-railing and spamming threads that didn’t go our way, or making accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. Sometimes I had to simply lie and claim a poster said something or did something “in another thread” they really hadn’t said or done I felt bad about this…but in the end I felt worse about the possibility of losing the first job I’d been able to get since losing my “real” job.

The funny thing was, although I started the job with no strong opinions or political views, after a few weeks of this I became very emotionally wedded to the pro-Israel ideas I was pushing. There must be some psychological factor at work…a good salesman learns to honestly love the products he’s selling, I guess. It wasn’t long before my responses became fiery and passionate, and I began to learn more about the topic on my own. “This is a good sign,” my trainer told me. “It means you are ready for the next step: complex debate.”

The “complex debate” part of the job involved a fair amount of additional training, including memorizing more specific information about the specific posters (friendly and hostile) I’d be sparring with. Here, too, there were scripts and suggested lines of argument, but we were given more freedom. There were a lot of details to this more advanced stage of the job – everything from how to select the right avatar to how to use “demotivationals” (humorous images with black borders that one finds floating around the web). Even the proper use of images of cats was discussed. Sometimes we used faked or photo-shopped images or doctored news reports (something else that bothered me).

I was also given the job of tying to find new recruits, people “like me” who had the personality type, ability to keep a secret, basic writing/thinking skills, and desperation necessary to sign on a shill. I was less successful at this part of the job, though, and I couldn’t find another in the time I was there.

After a while of doing this, I started to feel bad. Not because of the views I was pushing (as I said, I was first apolitical, then pro-Israel), but because of the dishonesty involved. If my arguments were so correct, I wondered, why did we have to do this in the first place? Shouldn’t truth propagate itself naturally, rather than through, well…propaganda? And who was behind this whole operation, anyway? Who was signing my paychecks? The stress of lying to my parents and friends about being a “consultant” was also getting to me. Finally, I said enough was enough. I quit in September 2011. Since then I’ve been working a series of unglamorous temp office jobs for lower pay. But at least I’m not making my living lying and heckling people who come online to express their views and exercise freedom of speech.

A few days ago I happened to be in the same neighborhood and on a whim thought I’d check out the old office. It turns out the operation is gone, having moved on. This, too, I understood, is part of their strategy: Don’t stay in the same place for too long, don’t keep the same name too long, move on after half a year or so. Keeping a low profile, finding new employees through word of mouth: All this is part of the shill way of life. But it is a deceptive way of life, and no matter how noble the goals (I remain pro-Israel, by the way), these sleazy means cannot be justified by the end.

This is my confession. I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether I want to talk more about this, so if I don’t respond to this thread, don’t be angry. But I think you should know: Shills exist. They are real. They walk among you, and they pay special attention to your popular gold-bordered WATS posters. You should be aware of this. What you choose to do with this awareness is up to you.

Yours,

ExShill

You were working for Donald Trump. The strategies were exactly the same:

"These strategies included various forms of personal attacks, complaining to the forum moderators, smearing the characters of our opponents, using images and icons effectively, and even dragging the tone of the conversation down with sexual innuendo, “Sometimes we have to fight dirty,”

How does this differ from Trump?

 

[HUGGY]

MikeTX seems desperate to get attention. Posting this story that is not his/hers/it's own as if it were is pathetic.

Should have changed it up to make it more believable. The date in the story is too dated. There is too much information. Too much irrelevant detail. The kicker, for me, is that there was no mention of pay which would have drawn people in...not to mention that the style is nothing like Mikey's posts. He/she/it should really have posted this OP as a sock.

Cut and paste is a lazy way to get attention. If someone is crying out for attention I want to see real tears thank you.

Another shill. It says in black and white that it is not me. Spin spin lie gurgle...

I would love to be a paid shill. Where do I sign up? I don't take the internets seriously anyway.

 

[Ame®icano]

Part 1

This is a paid shills own story.

If any of this is true and you're coming out clean, you wont have problem showing some proof (i.e. redacted paystub).

 

[candycorn]

If anyone can direct me where to sign up to be a paid shill, please forward the information immediately.

 

[miketx]

If anyone can direct me where to sign up to be a paid shill, please forward the information immediately.

You already admitted you were one in another thread.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

factors including ability to keep one’s mouth shut, basic writing skills, and desperation for work.

Anyone who would hire you must be more stupid than you and that is "simply not possible" sorry LOL

 

[miketx]

Sorry you are indeed.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

If anyone can direct me where to sign up to be a paid shill, please forward the information immediately.

You already admitted you were one in another thread.

you are a goof ball bro lets get real LOL you are "driving Cadillac in your dreams " LOL

 

[miketx]

5 months left until the gaggers are gone.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

Sorry you are indeed.

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I am laughing at the time you took to bull shit and flail at "Libruls"

 

[Moonglow]

If anyone can direct me where to sign up to be a paid shill, please forward the information immediately.

You already admitted you were one in another thread.

We all are...USMB is just a cover operation for a scam site..

 

[miketx]

No, there's only a few....