Since Grusch, there is a deliberate and coordinated tendency of posts to confuse, discourage, mislead the reddittors, the main target is, to me, the newcomers after Grusch came out.

I’ve been skimming and observing the sub long time before and after Grusch.

I noticed a clear rise in some kind of publications with clear purposes.

1 – the obvious hoaxes and tinfoil farces like teh nazca mummies, the peru flying aliens, the las vegas aliens, the new year eve alien and others .
Strangely, those subjects, altho they would be consideres as funny and farcical are remarkably sticky in the sub and even in classic media. this is stunning that the las vegas aliens had way more coverage than the congress hearings.
My feeling and conclusion is that it is done deliberately to keep a riicule lore and tinfoil cover in the subject, particularly towards the newcomers. Instead of some credible or “thinkable” facts and discussions, they find that kind of subjects that will tend to repulse them away or question the legitimacy of the subject.

2 – the “put up or shut up” cohort.
i saw many posts done in a passive-agressive mode, apparently questionning the credibility of some “UFOheads” by asking apparently harmless questions as if they were into an intellectual personnal path to find the truth. Their goal is always to sow confusion and their target is, IMO, again the newcomers, the soft-skepticals and the soft-believers.

3 – character poisonning.
There has been various attemps to character asssassination (Grusch, Elizondo, Mellon etc). But those attempts were very obvious and didn’t root very well in the sub.
So came the “character poisonning”, where some people hint quite subtly at the alledged cracks or discrepencies in someone’s claims, job, career etc … not a direct hit job but, with repetition and re-iteration, a slow erosion of that person’s reputation . Ross Coulthard has clearly been targeted.

Wht i think it’s deliberate and coordinated ? the manipulation mindset.

Let me explain. The UFO oldtimers soft skeptics or firm believers won’t be influenced by one post, one person’s claims, one event, one story. They, like me, will read, read the opposite, watch, watch the opposite. Believe only half of what they are told and half of what they see. Then their culture, knowledge and their common sense will allow them to give someone or something a higher or lower probabilit to be legit and credible.

Manipulation goons think people will change their minds after someone claim this or that. That’s not how it works on longtimers, but it may influence newcomers.

Thats only my personal opinion. I’m no specialist but i trust my ability to sense tendencies when i observe them over quite a year.

This is the typical playbook of online influence campaigns… already been done elsewhere.