Thank you Tew.

With you saying, "That's like saying the JFK assassination may not have been done only by oswald alone", this is non sequitur to me.

I was grappling for a suitable analogy, and actually under pressure at work during a brief break.

I think to some extent it does work, however, because to many people in the past and perhaps even now (?), it surely was NOT obvious that teh JFK murder was a conspiracy that involved CIA and a whole bunch of other unsavories. I think a lot of people simply accepted the official 'story'.

So it kind of corresponds. Not everyone is as familiar with the clickbait disinfo antics, or specific sites like RRR or the People's Crap, etc, as you point out, so saying it sounds suspicious makes sense.

I wanted to draw an analogy that didn't sound condescending or pompous (good luck with that, FI) and it wasn't intended to imply that everyone SHOULD know exactly how full of crap these places are. Although, from personal experience, I think it really only needs a moderately developed antenna to pick up on that. You're sense that the source seemed suspicious indicates your antenna is operational to a degree.

It should be noted that they way I learned about these places was that I myself "fell victim" to some of them in my early anoning days, and re-posted things, only to find out later what was what. Once I realized what was happening - getting activated by sensationalist headlines or information item and then triggered to share and repost before actually vetting the information properly - I began to adopt different practices and countered their influence in my info sphere by developing usable practices for spotting dodgy stuff and quickly vetting it.

Some of my reaction is partly a sense of frustration, at least with people I think are NOT newcomers and should be (in my opinion) more diligent in managing the information they share. I mean, I've seen a mod and several prolific posters (like in our top 10 or 20) post Newspunch stuff directly in the past several months. Geepers. If you're a newcomer, its understandable, but pedes with at least a few years under their belt? That irks me.

But I really value your response here. It's important to recognize that we all have different strengths, and that perhaps its unreasonable to expect others to spot the grimey stuff as quickly as (I think I do). But we all make mistakes too, and Perhaps there is a bit of room for me to reflect on exactly what attitudes I'm bringing to the board as far as the posting of this stuff is concerned.

If you have found my digs useful, that's a massive plus. I recall how on VOAT and other forums, not so much here now, people used to lash out if you asked for source or some actual research to go with what they post. They'd say "Don't be lazy. Do your own research."

My view was always that if one person invests an hour and then delivers the fruits of that work in a useful form, that can save hundreds, or thousands of human work hours that otherwise other pedes would have to do themselves.

I definitely encourage people to do their own research, but doing a bit extra or making the effort to smooth the way for others is another way of advancing the cause.

Actually, this afternoon I was just musing on the idea of encouraging others to actually go to Newspunch and dig and research. I think more of us actually need to investigate and familiarize ourselves with disinfo operations, because sun tzu, "know your enemy" I wonder how many pedes simply don't bother spending any time analysing or familiarizing themselves with the fake news distortion disinfo methodologies, and so that stuff just doesn't even occupy any of their attention.

IMO, it should, because (imo) we are most certainly under attack. All the time.

In any case, I expect to be reflecting on my attitudes and assumptions. Thank you very much for the useful (and honest) feedback.