I remember watching Nelson Mandelas funeral on the BBC in the 80's. Now I dont believe that actually happened, but I am interested in knowing why I and thousands of other people share this memory of witnessing something that did not happen. That's why I visit this sub regularly, although I rarely post.

I dont believe paid trolls are always necessary because people love arguing on the internet. People will defend arguments and opinions they dont agree with or hold, just to argue with someone.

I don't believe shills are needed to discredit something as out there as ME because the very concept discredits itself as far as most people are concerned. Especially when most posts on this sub are spelling errors, but then maybe that IS the shills, who knows?

The biggest observation I have made is that there are shills all over this sub. I understand the word ‘shill’ is thrown around, and it is often used against anybody who disagrees, but there are obvious shills and consistent trolls here. This is obvious to most of us, and that leads to the question…why?

First of all, paid shills are a real thing, and they are found all over Reddit.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/

Now, it’s one thing to expect paid shill for Hillary Clinton, and perhaps even paid shills in subs like /r/conspiracy, but why here?

You're linked article, that you present as evidence of paid shills on reddit, does not even mention reddit once and is only about Israel maybe sorta thinking about employing pro-Israel shills. I'm not saying pro-israel shills aren't on reddit, I'm just saying that your article does not support your assertion that "paid shills are a real thing, and they are found all over Reddit".

This quoted section also shows a huge leap in logic, you haven't shown evidence that paid shills are on reddit, but lets pretend you did for a second, that still wouldn't be evidence that the shills or trolls on this sub are paid. This is low hanging fruit for wanna be trolls, it's no surprise that a sub like this would attract them.

I honestly dont undertsand this mentality. You must have a huge ego and an iceberg sized chip on your shoulder if you think people would only disagree with you if they were paid to do so.

That kind of thinking is toxic and leads to places like this becoming nothing but echo chambers.