What's with all the weird non-sequitur questions?

Question answered by honorarykid in Scientology

lutefisk asked this question on 9/9/2000:

As the subject says...

honorarykid gave this response on 9/10/2000:

None of the non-sequitur questioners whom I've queried about either their motives for asking or their affiliations, has answered me.

But I think it's painfully obvious that we are seeing Scientologists posting these messages, in what they call "Dev-T" (which stands for "developed traffic").

Dev-T, or developed traffic, is a manipulative brainwashing control technique that works by blocking people's access to truthful information.

Dev-T works by burying the real information in a sea of noise and useless garbage.

I don't think this technique will work very well on AskMe.com, since for almost every instance of Dev-T questions, the readers will be treated to an unflattering discussion of one of Scientology's control and manipulation techniques. And what a surprise, here comes one now! ;-)

The CoS has twice tried this same type of "Dev-T" tactic, in an innovative and industrial style, in order to make the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s) unreadable for Internet newbies.

Back in 1996, the CoS was behind an effort called the "Spam Bomb," in which thousands of messages per day were robotically posted to a.r.s. Each message consisted of a cookie cutter paragraph about the "lies" found on a.r.s, followed a single line or quote out of the Scientology book "The Way to Happiness" and concluding with the URLs to Scientology's official web sites. The posts always came from anonymous, cash pre-paid ISP accounts.

Since that denial of service abuse of Usenet was a violation of most ISP's terms of service agreements, the spamming accounts were almost always quickly cancelled. But then, the spam robot programs would simply start up from another account, from another ISP, somewhere in the country.

The spam bomb originated from the same physical computers. The operators of those computers willingly paid the long distance dialing charges to connect to their nationwide web of cash pre-paid, anonymous ISP accounts. This operation took nationwide coordination, and a lot of money, probably in the 10s of thousands of dollars to run. It lasted for about 6 months, if I recall correctly. Then, mercifully (for the people who read a.r.s), it ended abruptly, without comment or apology from the CoS.

The second Dev-T attack on a.r.s was far more annoying and substantially more insideous.

In late 98 or early 99, the CoS sponsored a similar effort, with the same use of a nationwide set of cash prepaid, anonymous ISP accounts.

But this time, the messages were different. The posting robot program actually forged the names of regular a.r.s posters to the messages. Then program would cut and paste in the message bodies from the most vitriolic and provocative newsgroups.

My name, and the names of many others, were submitted with the text from thousands of hateful, ugly rantings of Neo-Nazis and alt.flamers, not to mention explicit sexual discussions. Usenet got a new term as a result of these postings. "Sporgery" describes a spam-forgery.

The point was, of course, to both discredit the regular a.r.s participants, and to create so many ugly, hateful Dev-T messages on a.r.s, that readers would not be able to find the relatively few legitimate posts there, most of which deal with the political abuses of the cult.

This first sporgery tactic backfired almost immediately. New readers of a.r.s saw thousands of robotically posted messages (one every one or two seconds), in which there was bizarre, hateful and pornographic messages. They simply couldn't believe what they were seeing.

They demanded an explanation, and they immediately got one. And instantly, and forever thereafter, these new a.r.s readers understood exactly what kind of "church" the CoS really was.

They knew without a doubt, that the CoS was the kind of church that would unfairly try to smear it's critics with the worst, ugliest, most offensive materials found on Usenet.

So, after a few weeks of this, the CoS seemed to understand that this was a blunder, that they were turning more people into critics, rather than less.

Ah, but they didn't give up on the idea of Dev-T. They merely changed their tactics.

The forged message robots then began posting nonsensical, bizarre, content that was generated out of a computer program, but still forged under the names of regular posters to a.r.s.

This second wave of "Dev-T" denial of service attacks on the newsgroup a.r.s lasted for about 8 months, if I recall correctly. It finally ended last October. Over 1 million forged messages where posted to a.r.s by the sporgery team. I estimate that the cost of this second Dev-T operation to be $50K to $100K. That's part of what Scientologist's tax deductible contributions go to support, folks. Amazing, eh?

By comparison, a few non-sequitur questions to AskMe.com seems almost naive and sweet. But don't be fooled. Scientology's desire to suppress what kinds of information YOU can read is the driving motive behind CoS sponsored "Dev-T." And that sort of suppression and oppression is never sweet and innocent.

lutefisk rated this answer:

Excellent answer, thanks. Having posted this question, I've now received a non-sequitur question about someone's grandmother in Exeter - as you say, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

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