Over two weeks since The Big Reopening...

[TheVampiresWife]

...and so far, the carnage predicted by some on MN has not come to pass. Indeed the opposite seems to be true. This from my local newspaper suggests that in the north east (where we had the highest rates in the UK just a few weeks ago) we're doing far better than was expected by this point. It's worth remembering that Newcastle is renowned as a party city and the clubs have been busy since they reopened at 12.01am on 19 July. We would definitely expect to be seeing a surge in infections by now, if it was going to happen.

And for those who will jump on to say that less testing/schools being off will skew the data - that's addressed in the article, and the proportional rate of infection/testing.

In my local area the rate was almost 1500/100k just three or four weeks ago, now it's less than 300. I'm sure the naysayers will be along shortly to tell us that the data is noisy/unreliable/not to be trusted, but let's hope all the predictions of 100k cases a day and 'calm before the storm' are wildly off. It certainly is looking that way.

The politically motivated posts have had opposite effect on me though and made me feel annoyance with that end of spectrum. So not sure it’s helping their cause,

That suggests that you’re not the target audience then @MarshaBradyo. As I said, they’re not looking to change anyone’s mind their looking to win those whose minds aren’t made up.

I’m not entrenched though I’ve voted both ways.

I find the politicisation of discussion re a virus highly irritating.

Not sure how other centre ground people feel.

I’d be really surprised if those posters are being paid, not to say SM isn’t used in various underhand ways though.

Fair enough @MarshaBradyo.

This is a decent starting point for referencing the fact that people are absolutely paid to do this as a job en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_farm. There’s an abundance of information out there to back it up.

MN isn’t a little obscure community, it has clot.

I know it happens and mn has clout. I have been on threads that have ended up in media and change has happened. I’m aware our collective voices can drive conversation.

Where I think it falls down is that all of us are fairly stubborn and really has anyone been influenced by anyone else?

We tend to see posters that have same views, I do anyway. And then if people are vehemently in disagreement most just dig in as a result.

But I’ll ask - has anyone been influenced to think differently due to the might be paid posters?

I’ve not actually seen media represent any views that don’t follow the more balanced middle ground rather than derailers and more provocative.

Thinking about it the direction of influence seems to be from mn outwards

Not repetitive derailers over those who post

I have no idea if some posters on here are paid or not, but it's interesting that the same 2 or 3 posters only ever seem to post on the coronavirus board...

@MarshaBradyo(Thank you for not repeating my spelling error with clout )

That’s the thing though isn’t it? Do manipulated people know they’ve been manipulated?

I’d like to think I can spot it on various places online or irl (particularly when it comes to marketing or religion irl) but truthfully I’m not super human, I can kid myself that I have never been influenced or directed but it’s not true or even possible. How would I even know?

It's good isn't it.

It's best to ignore the more hysterical ones on here; I think most people do anyway.

For some posters it does seem like a job. It’s like they are on Mumsnet all day, waiting to pounce on any thread. Posting constantly but on no other boards. I’ve often wondered how they have the time...

It has occurred to me that Us 4 Them might in fact be a "destabilising" group as their policies - no vaccines for children, no masks, open schools in a pandemic etc - tend to cause worse spread of disease in a pandemic.

It's interesting that some of the most frequent posters on these threads are criticising other posters for posting regularly .

I am fairly "centre" in that I don't generally vote for either of the big 2 parties these days .

It does surprise me that people on here dislike the Guardian so much, I would see it as very much a balance to the very right wing media we have in the UK, and the science and medicine articles are often very good.

Research scientists are not ego driven media moguls obsessed with being right or wrong.

I think we have seen a lot of distrust in sceintists as there has been lots of sceintists who have loved the attention and are posting all over social media and on the news.

And when people say well you aren't a epidemiologist, neither are many members of sage who comment on such things such as their many phycological manipulaters sorry phycologists.

This isn't research sceintists but these people have muddied the waters for sceintists somewhat.

Not that I’ve done it, but it’s usually an interesting exercise to follow the money on groups like them for us @herecomesthsun.

Cornetto did you see the leaked chat logs from the HART group who have been co-ordinating the various campaign groups against masks, vaccinating kids, lockdown such as Us4Them?

There was a guy who used to work for Cambridge Analytica who advised them how to target people who wore masks and tactics on how to nudge them into ditching them. Interesting stuff.

twitter.com/karamballes/status/1420136511115255808?s=21

Imagine if we had groups on every thread about masks calling people selfish pricks, but not it's all about others.

I don’t think the OP is wanting a bun fight at all. It’s a natural post that highlights a lot of what the doom merchants say as complete crap! Yet we are supposed to listen and accept it time and time again.

Yet we are supposed to listen and accept it time and time again

Are we? There’s no captive audience or compulsion to accept anything. Neutrally I would suggest that you consider how you use the internet if that’s genuinely how you feel. It’s not mandatory to expose yourself to any of this and plenty of other avenues to fulfil the gap online forums might fill.

@noblegiraffe, I’d come across references but not looked into it much so thanks for that. There’s certainly a lot to digest there.

@Cornettoninja Bloody ell my mind is blown!

Ooh and I’m even more cross about the posters who shall not been named now

re. masks in particular - we the public are subjected to "propaganda" on both sides of the debate. To wear them and to ditch them. This stuff works in both directions. I think most people, certainly the ones I know, are in the middle - wear them on the tube for example if the carriage is busy but not necessarily on the platform.
Remember all that "double masking" stuff when suddenly everyone in the US was wearing two masks - even Fauci was pictured with his two masks on.
It didn't really take off here in the UK but it was clearly a political pro-mask statement in the US where mask wearing seems very divisive.
I am so pro mask that not only do I wear one mask, I wear two!

It no longer seems to be a thing so presumably not actually that beneficial and probably a nuisance to keep going.

Remembering political posters, I recall the prolific poster from last summer (some male name) who was only on the school threads and who was clearly a union activist. Started a thread every single day for a while. Actually I wish MN could stop people just starting threads over and over on the same subject. That’d stymie some of ‘em.

@DottyHarmer Yes! He was the one who was harping on about some magic treatment coming wasn’t he? Said some dreadful things and then disappeared into the ether

Remembering political posters, I recall the prolific poster from last summer (some male name) who was only on the school threads and who was clearly a union activist.

Climbdad.

Yeah, his contribution was highly questionable.

He gave the game away by giving some extremely specific contract advice to a teacher on another thread. Rookie error.

[quote noblegiraffe]Cornetto did you see the leaked chat logs from the HART group who have been co-ordinating the various campaign groups against masks, vaccinating kids, lockdown such as Us4Them?

There was a guy who used to work for Cambridge Analytica who advised them how to target people who wore masks and tactics on how to nudge them into ditching them. Interesting stuff.

twitter.com/karamballes/status/1420136511115255808?s=21[/quote]
Thought there had been something grimly determined about the anti-mask posting. This thread helps to make sense of what's going on here (and everywhere).

I don't think the most prolific doom posters are paid. I know several people IRL where I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they were secretly more invested in things going badly to prove Boris wrong than in seeing the situation get better, and it's not a stretch to imagine there's a small number of people who are like that but more so, to the point where they post obsessively online. I mean we're talking about, what, four or five posters, among how many thousands of people who use this board, which is itself a sample that's skewed towards people who post on forums a lot - that just seems like a realistic proportion of people who are unhealthily (IMO) obsessed with the worst case scenario.

Likewise last year a lot of prolific posters were accused of being paid anti-lockdown shills, when on the whole I thought they were expressing views that were perfectly normal within the wider population, but went against the grain on MN. I don't doubt that there are some posters on big forums like this who are paid to try and manipulate opinion, but I also think people are sometimes too quick to jump to "this poster must be getting paid because no-one could possibly hold that belief genuinely".

Who's paying the doom mongers though, and with what agenda?

I can understand people thinking that people who were minimising, or making out that things were loads better than they were, were being paid by the government. Even if you don't believe it's true (and I don't), you can follow the logic of "let's keep things calm and not allow things to descend into panic".

Perhaps in March 2020 there was a government aim of keeping us terrified with doom and gloom predictions but since we have had the vaccine that has definitely shifted to "get the jab" and positivity about the future.

I think the doom merchants aren't shills, being paid to post. They are people who were probably anxious about illness, germs and bacteria before Covid, the last 18 months has wrecked their mental health, and they are now utterly paranoid and convinced it's all going to be awful.