I just ran across this article, and since it talks about something I used to experience many years ago, I thought I'd link to it here.
Back around 10 to 12 or so years ago, I was spending a good amount of time on Yahoo groups and some other message boards that discussed the "tax honesty" movement. I stopped visiting them because it became an exercise in futility. I discovered that there were many who didn't want to do their own research, they just wanted a "cookie cutter" method to get the IRS off of their back. There is no such thing, imho.
Then there were the trolls, those that wanted to nitpick every thing you wrote, or discredit some of the leaders of the tax honesty movement. Reading this article reminded me of that time. It gets so you don't know who to trust, so I decided to trust no one. In that respect, they won.
Here's the first paragraph of the article, which is titled "The Conspiracy Theory is True...":
In the annals of internet conspiracy theories, none is more pervasive than the one speculating paid government plants infiltrate websites, social network sites, and comment sections with an intent to sow discord, troll, and generally manipulate, deceive and destroy reputations. Guess what: it was all true.
