We know that there are people who get paid to write fake reviews and post supportive comments in relation to political actions and figures. Could there just as easily be people paid to be trolls in order to dissuade people from certain ideas by making them unpalatable?

This could be on any site, anywhere and for any reason, but I was just browsing through 'new/all' and noticed Amalek is back to his spammy self again. A lot of what he says isn't completely off base but the way he says it and the fact that he plasters it on so many different subs under similar yet different usernames with no context, often with just an aggressive title, makes even those who would otherwise agree with him nauseous. He isn't vague about anything though, he spells out the direct point he wants heard.

If someone wanted us to ignore a group like PETA, for example, spamming titles like "thousands of INNOCENT dogs are cruelly MURDERED each year by shelters. Breeders are behind this as is guarantees them a continued customer base and YOU SUPPORT IT" would make people tune out the message more than they might if you were reasonable about approaching the subject. If they kept that up, individuals could turn whole communities against specific ideas just by associating obnoxious assholes with it.

So, is it really just annoying asshats or could some people be deliberately driving a wedge between us and any given topic just by being pricks?