Definitely not a paranoid suggestion. Whether or not they will be engaging in this tactic, we don't know, but it is absolutely a common tactic (and one very easily done).
Hey, maybe Angry_Citizen has been contracted to help pay for his schooling.
Speaking of which (and I kid about A-C, hehe, totally not focusing on an individual right now), we really do need to be mindful of the trolls and dissenters.
It only takes one of them (and we have one or two main ones on the official forums... hey, it is true) that really are dragging down threads left and right.
We need to respond to each other on the main forums and ignore and/or casually dismiss the trolling.
I just saw one post that was simply a positive rah rah and... unfortunately, it was replied to by dissenters first and the OP felt left on his own against them and gave up. We need to try and chime in and support each other and really do our best to simply not even acknowledge the trollish posts that continue to drag things down over there.
It's always been true... the negative posts get the most attention, but I think we should possibly focus on stopping that trend for now and give our attention to the positive.
I think, most often, we want to prove the negative comments wrong, so that they don't influence other people who may not know better and/or are on the fence about how they feel.
However, by ignoring them and rebounding and replying off of each other, we bury the negativity instead of polarizing it.
Just my opinions on something I've been seeing regarding morale.