>>21317That image you keep posting doesn't make sense.
I'm not saying I disagree, I'm saying it's semantically weird.
1) The term 'CONSENSUS CRACKING' (emphasis in original, just like in the image) seems to originate only from
The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies >>21142 which claims a certain method is used to develop a crack, a method which doesn't involve posting bait or trolling at all. In fact, it would be smartest to intentionally
avoid seeming like either, because the point is to attack your weak planted argument with evidence which appears convincing and widely supported (i.e. the consensus) to the uninformed reader. The rigged argument results in a pre-determined break of consensus being reached in the thread, because one side was intentionally introduced with a weak premise and the other side is artificially inflated with fake accounts. If the cracker were trolling or baiting for reactions, they wouldn't convince the uninformed reader nor be able to fake an anti-consensus, plus it would encourage other forum members to be adverse and then discredit the cracking attempt with real counter-arguments rather than only a rigged one, ruining the consensus crack.
Trolls posting bait is not a consensus cracking attempt, as they do not attempt to plant a conversation which reaches a rigged anti-consensus. If anything, they strive for the opposite - universal opposition to their posts. They reinforce the consensus by making an inflammatory opposition to it for the consensus to unite around, while consensus cracking attempts to manufacture a positive opposition to the consensus.
2) The images disregards that and implicitly reinterprets a 'consensus crack' as a shift in the Overton window of acceptable ideas, so let's be fair and work with that.
But even then, ignoring a shitty unwanted post has the same effect as the regular users themselves forum sliding that unwanted post! It doesn't create any impression that the post's ideas are accepted (let alone consensus!!) if it is completely ignored. Nor does it create that impression if, rather than taking the bait, users refuse to dignify it with a response and simply post laughing anime girls.Rather, to take bait and pretend it has a right to conversation is to fall for a disruption tactic, and simultaneously draw more attention to dumb trash, and simultaneously validate it as an argument and not a ploy.
3) It's not a 'known COINTEL tactic'.
COINTEL == COINTELPRO. And the one document that links 'consensus cracking' with the word 'COINTELPRO' is that same
Gentleperson's Guide. It's right at the top, where consensus cracking is listed as the second in the list of 'COINTELPRO Techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum.'
(Obviously, and as implied later in the document, the author isn't referring literally to COINTELPRO, as it officially ended long before internet forums existed, but rather they're using the name COINTELPRO generically to refer to the FBI's ongoing political counter-intelligence operations).
The author of the guide provides no sources for anything anywhere, and it seems like there is no source for what they say at all. It's just a list of trolling techniques someone codified, with the claim that it's being used by 'feds' and 'spooks'. And hey, maybe they are using those tactics, it could be logical for them to, but that's a far cry from it being a 'known tactic'.
If it were a confirmed tactic, it would be simple to prove by giving a single source of 'consensus cracking' which doesn't stem from that
Gentleperson's Guide.