Normally when someone makes a claim they back it up with a news article. If you had a link to a news article that I could visit that said there is a Clinton/Abedin tape then I could look at the authors’ name. I could look at other articles penned by the same author, I could use my judgment as to whether the person frequently posts unproveable things or not. That's how I determine if someone is an acceptable journalist.

Then I would look at the source name that the author cites, and if it's an unnamed source the claim is more credible in my mind if their previous publications don't resemble the work of Sorcha Faal or other internet bullshit artists.

Look, I was not trying to pick a fight with you. I thought my last comment was respectable, but then you went ahead and copped an attitude. So, it's whatever. The fact remains that there is no there-there in your claim about the tape. You are making a sensational claim that many people will believe, because our class of politicians are on par with a poorly delivered aristocrats joke.

Yet that doesn’t let you off the hook with respects to trying to pass these kinds of things off as fact. I don’t know if you are familiar with poisoning the well or not, and I do not know if you are doing this intentionally. Many times legitimate conspiracy theories are hijacked by unprovable claims so that the legitimate conspiracy becomes less believable.

The people planting the seed, they know what they are doing, but the useful idiots who take it an run with it, they don’t have a freaking clue. Both of these types of people do harm not only to legitimate conspiracy theories, but also to the movements that they associate themselves with.

If you want a topic to discuss at the next meeting, I would propose, that we figure out a way to productively address members that associate disinformation with the #informationwar tag. I could foresee it becoming an even bigger problem in the future as the group grows in size.

Poisoning the well, in the sense that I am using it, is an attempt to smear the reputation of a conspiracy theory by adding to it, or sprinkling bullshit atop of it. For example, if someone with clout believed your story about the existence of a tape. Lets say this person is a media personality, and then they started talking about it on air. What would happen is they would be sued, news outlets would pick up on the lawsuit, and the next thing you know the spin is that pedogate doesn't exist, it's a vicious conspiracy theory invented by the sucker who believed your post, and tried to pass it off as truth.

Then when other well meaning people attempt to try and expose #pedogate, they'd be laughed out of the room, by people who think that it's just a "conspiracy theory", as the word is used in the derogatory sense.