FYI ATS

[727Sky]

This was sent to me by a friend via Email and thought some of you might be interested. Those were the days....

  Sat, Aug 31 at 7:35 AM  I just finished reading a book called Area 51, An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen.  I thought you would like this part: "In 2011 there are an estimated 1.96 billion Internet users worldwide - almost one-third of the people on the planet-and the most popular conspiracy Web site based in America is AboveTopSecret.com.  According to CEO Bill Irvine, the site sees five million visitors each month.  AboveTopSecret.com has approximately 2.4 million pages of content, including 10.6 million individual posts.  The Web site's motto is Deny Ignorance, and its members say they are people who 'rage against the mindless status-quo.' Of 25,000AboveTopSecret.com users polled in 2011, the second most popular discussion thread involves extraterrestrials and UFO cover-ups at Area 51.  But the single most popular discussion thread at AboveTopSecret.com is something called the new World Order.  According to Bill Irvine, this idea has gained momentum at an 'astonishing rate' over the past two years.  Irvine says it serves as a nexus conspiracy for many other, including those based at Area 51."

[Maxmars]

Those were the days indeed... very different

(and before several changes in the world we know...  which all serve to demonstrate that all things change in time...)

Long ago, when chunks of the internet had not yet been seized by toxic social media armies and their hired help, it was possible to have that "ATS" experience... to exist in that way...

now it's... very different.


Don't give up - we still have "us."  - P.G.

[Karl12]

Of 25,000AboveTopSecret.com users polled in 2011, the second most popular discussion thread involves extraterrestrials and UFO cover-ups at Area 51. 

Great thread.

Can't beat a good old UFO coverup and back in the day the ATS UFO forum used to be awesome.

Long ago, when chunks of the internet had not yet been seized by toxic social media armies and their hired help, it was possible to have that "ATS" experience... to exist in that way...

Yes you're not wrong mate and let's not forget the CoIntelPro and Psy-Op goons as well ('cognitive infiltration' and all that).

You'd think if there were nothing to all this conspiracy UFO/NWO malarkey then the government simply would not bother.

[l0st]

This was sent to me by a friend via Email and thought some of you might be interested. Those were the days....

HA! Well, NWO isn't even a conspiracy theory. The Bilderberg group laid out plans for Congress back in 1954.  I don't know if anyone else remembers, but just like the EU, there were original plans for a "North American Union" with a unified currency called the "Amero". Its the whole reason they began building what was originally call the "North American Highway" or "International Highway" that runs from Mexico all the way through Canada, which I believe is now called "Interstate 11". It was also the driving force behind "Real-ID" as what was originally planned was that with the realid system all NA drivers licenses would become international for the continent.

The UN had plans for Agenda 21(Now Agenda 2030) posted right on their website with recorded discussions on the topic from groups such as the WEF. I've had this discussion on other, non-conspiracy sites around the start of Covid and of course I was mocked and ridiculed until I provided links at which point several people's minds were BLOWN.

Probably all scrubbed from the dead internet now.

Edit:

Figured I'd add some color on the North American Union. I've posted an AI summary below (looks accurate). Interestingly, a cursory search on YouTube did not turn up this specific sequel to the series of movies with any search terms referencing the North American Union:
"Cinematic Insight: North American Union in the Zeitgeist
 The Zeitgeist movie series, specifically Part III, alleges a secret agreement to merge the United States, Canada, and Mexico into a North American Union as a step towards the creation of a single world government. According to the film, this union would enable the implantation of RFID chips in every human to monitor individual activity and suppress dissent.
 
The film presents this idea as a conspiracy theory, suggesting that international leaders are working towards a global government. While the North American Union (NAU) was a proposed concept discussed in the early 2000s, it did not come to fruition. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) was a trilateral initiative between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, aiming to increase economic cooperation and security. However, it was met with skepticism and criticism, and ultimately did not lead to the creation of a formal NAU.

The Zeitgeist movie’s claims about the NAU and RFID chips are speculative and have been widely criticized by experts and fact-checkers. Many have disputed the accuracy of the film’s assertions, citing a lack of credible evidence to support these conspiracy theories.

In summary, while the Zeitgeist movie presents the idea of a North American Union as a step towards a single world government, this concept has been largely discredited and did not come to pass. The film’s claims about RFID chips and individual monitoring are unfounded and have been widely debunked."

Widely debunked, eh?

[Maxmars]

In the practice of narrative control, those agencies and cabals involved will contrive anything within their imagination to establish 'sentiment' about very sensitive topics.  We have actually witnessed this most recently with the COVID event.  But it had been happening for quite some time (generally since the early 20th century) and there are many examples of it in the mainstream, robotically repeated over and over... always to make any speculation about an "agenda" seem - on it's face - completely the domain of lunatics and paranoids... all the while repeatedly proved true... over and over... and always met with the same process of social counter-conditioning.

[what follows this is just my opinion as a member]

ATS had been a bastion of a more dispassionate approach to the topics and information about certain topics, rather than just a collection of tabloidesque "shock and reaction" conversations... In other words, if it was to be marketed as "entertainment," it was entertainment of a different order.  Many referred to it as "denying ignorance."

It distinguished itself in a common appreciation of sane and sober discussion... and achieved it for quite a long while there...  

Frankly, it veered from that, and the community suffered. 

This is not exactly any particular person's fault or doing, nor do I believe that it was a change 'wrought upon it'... just a kind of organic 'break' in the dialogue, leaving a vacuum to be filled with less-focused, more opinionated and transient exchanges to bubble to the forefront... 

It was that change which was seized upon, to make room for certain personalities to effect their own personal visions in driving the community (quite undemocratically, I might add.)  Almost needless to say... that ploy didn't work out, and the response felt was a stereotypically petulant destructive 'leadership' reaction...

ATS appears to have experienced an intentional deathblow... but the actual community has not... it remains...
Which brings some of us here...
The rest is up to us all.

Remember, we are still here.

[Just an opinion, nothing more.]

[FlyingClayDisk]

The "Internet" has indeed changed over the past couple decades, and not always for the better.  As Max notes, the armies of social media and their hired disinfo agents is one of the negative things, but also in a larger sense just the sheer amount of information 'out there' has changed people's perceptions.

Many of the conspiracy theories of old have been debunked and/or had a lot of the blanks filled in to the point were new discussion topics are rare.  The exposure of world government corruption is the new conspiracy du jour. Additionally, social media activism has amplified this to center stage virtually everywhere you look.  All that massive wealth of new information which was supposed to help us and protect us hasn't really had that effect.  Arguably, quite the opposite; there's more hate in the world today than there ever has been.  Now people can hate other people they don't even know, whereas before their hate was limited to selected individuals and groups in their limited communities and world view.  Now everyone can hate everyone else...and seemingly do.

None of this was ATS' fault, or any other single site, but collectively the Internet has had a lot to do with social change in our society today.  ATS was a victim in a process which was so much larger than any website.  Bulletin board-like forums gave way to visual social media.  Platforms like Twitter made people express themselves in 240 characters or less.  And the whole globe began to believe reading the written word was just too much damn effort...so they just stopped doing it.  "Ain't got no time for that!"  Now society is controlled by sound-bytes and memes.  Paradigm change indeed.

When I joined ATS just 11 short years ago it was indeed a different place.  I'd known about ATS for a couple years prior to that, but never signed up because I wasn't sure what to make of ATS.  I saw real stuff, and I saw fantasy stuff, and I wasn't sure which to believe as the fundamental underpinning of the site owners.  ATS began to transition into more current events type subjects, and perhaps this was the "beginning of the end" for some.  I don't know.  For my part, it was the beginning.

I was never in on the ground floor of ATS back in the early 2000's, so I didn't see the owners as visibly as some did.  By my time most of them had gone their separate ways save for the periodic random post.  Therefore, I don't really have an opinion about "who" killed ATS other than lack of maintenance and updating.  Perhaps this was intentional, or maybe just a loss of interest...or both; I don't know.

I genuinely hope DI rises to the level of ATS in the future.  But then again, maybe this is not the desired trajectory by those in charge.  Candidly, I do believe it needs to grow some simply because right now user input, the lifeblood of any forum like this, is pretty slow.  No offense intended.  What content there is, is great, but there's just not enough of it, and this will take time, understandably. 

Just my .02 (which is probably worth a lot less, due to inflation, in the time it has taken to post this).

[midicon]

The "Internet" has indeed changed over the past couple decades, and not always for the better.  As Max notes, the armies of social media and their hired disinfo agents is one of the negative things, but also in a larger sense just the sheer amount of information 'out there' has changed people's perceptions.

Many of the conspiracy theories of old have been debunked and/or had a lot of the blanks filled in to the point were new discussion topics are rare.  The exposure of world government corruption is the new conspiracy du jour. Additionally, social media activism has amplified this to center stage virtually everywhere you look.  All that massive wealth of new information which was supposed to help us and protect us hasn't really had that effect.  Arguably, quite the opposite; there's more hate in the world today than there ever has been.  Now people can hate other people they don't even know, whereas before their hate was limited to selected individuals and groups in their limited communities and world view.  Now everyone can hate everyone else...and seemingly do.

None of this was ATS' fault, or any other single site, but collectively the Internet has had a lot to do with social change in our society today.  ATS was a victim in a process which was so much larger than any website.  Bulletin board-like forums gave way to visual social media.  Platforms like Twitter made people express themselves in 240 characters or less.  And the whole globe began to believe reading the written word was just too much damn effort...so they just stopped doing it.  "Ain't got no time for that!"  Now society is controlled by sound-bytes and memes.  Paradigm change indeed.

When I joined ATS just 11 short years ago it was indeed a different place.  I'd known about ATS for a couple years prior to that, but never signed up because I wasn't sure what to make of ATS.  I saw real stuff, and I saw fantasy stuff, and I wasn't sure which to believe as the fundamental underpinning of the site owners.  ATS began to transition into more current events type subjects, and perhaps this was the "beginning of the end" for some.  I don't know.  For my part, it was the beginning.

I was never in on the ground floor of ATS back in the early 2000's, so I didn't see the owners as visibly as some did.  By my time most of them had gone their separate ways save for the periodic random post.  Therefore, I don't really have an opinion about "who" killed ATS other than lack of maintenance and updating.  Perhaps this was intentional, or maybe just a loss of interest...or both; I don't know.

I genuinely hope DI rises to the level of ATS in the future.  But then again, maybe this is not the desired trajectory by those in charge.  Candidly, I do believe it needs to grow some simply because right now user input, the lifeblood of any forum like this, is pretty slow.  No offense intended.  What content there is, is great, but there's just not enough of it, and this will take time, understandably. 

Just my .02 (which is probably worth a lot less, due to inflation, in the time it has taken to post this).

I noticed a change when ATS put up those little button icons for Twitter and Facebook. I can't recall when that was but it did lead to an increase in membership and perhaps a decline in quality and tone.

[l0st]

I noticed a change when ATS put up those little button icons for Twitter and Facebook. I can't recall when that was but it did lead to an increase in membership and perhaps a decline in quality and tone.

They've been using dark patterns to keep people addicted to their twitter and facebook feeds. With the newer generations being raised on the xbox and playstation and their smartphone, they've not learned how to interact with people, how to listen, and how to empathize. They get their dopamine hits from the likes they get and the supportive comments they receive regardless of whether those comments are real or being made by 3rd party bot farms which simply reinforces their own personal worldviews without ever exposing them to different ways of thinking. Then the sites used algos to keep feeding people the stuff they "liked" ad-nauseum until the end user is in nothing but an echo chamber. Add to the a media the blatantly and knowingly pushes the political agenda of only one side of the political spectrum and you have all the confirmation bias one could possibly ask for.

Every try asking one of these people about their own personal positions on the crap they parrot day in and day out? I have. They can never answer, then they get mad like I've somehow tricked them. They aren't being tricked by me, they've been psychologically programmed by fascist government dictators and corporate execs. They never look at the book beyond the cover, and they actively ignore and even fight against any information they receive that goes against the programming, regardless of the voracity of the claims made.

[Karl12]

Great post right there l0st and don't think our corporate government overlords view critical thinking (or personal sovereignty) as very useful.

Regarding algorithm abuse it definitely looks to me like some kind of programmed hive mind cultism and really was put in mind of this old clip lol.

[jaded]

ATS hit the skids when posters were allowed to continually derail threads just to argue with each other. Plain & simple.

The notion everyone has a right to their opinion doesn't preclude the fact some of those opinions are being vented in completely the wrong threads. Letting people play that nonsense to preserve "site traffic" killed ATS. 

It's easy to blame social media but the fact Millennials & GenX have no clue how to write a coherent paragraph or stay on topic is also because no one holds them to that standard. People learn by example. Here in "cyberland" Mods aren't just thread-police. Pulling someones post & mentoring them in how to express a idea or opinion in a better way is what I mean by "learning by example". 

The older threads on ATS with the great topics & info equally were coherent, thoughtful and almost NEVER did you see a Mod Warning to STAY ON TOPIC.