Urgh, I feel like I just ate a second lunch reading that. The author is in dire need of an editor. Either way, this piece is nothing new: shilling has been ar

Urgh, I feel like I just ate a second lunch reading that. The author is in dire need of an editor. Either way, this piece is nothing new: shilling has been around for as long as time, and the bedrock of propaganda has always been guiding people into drawing conclusions that they believed they came to on their own. The Internet has only sped up and quantified the process. The solution (which the author leaves the reader to determine) is obvious: spend less time on the Internet, don't get caught up in pointless debates (and don't let them dwell on you when you're offline), and read more books, preferably by people who are long dead. EDIT: Speaking of books, I am reminded of the space-Rastas from (the very much alive) William Gibson's Neuromancer. Since they lived in their isolated space station, they avoided the Sprawl's relentless homogenization and retained their own identity. The same holds true for online communities: the bigger they get, the more valuable they become to marketers, who inevitably bring corporate-culture-crushing with them.