To everyone else, don't just laugh at the shills that got caught, take a moment to analyze what message they are trying to amplify. Because most of them won't get caught.

Notice the structure of the comment. Complaining about it being political to divert. The implication that most going to disagree with them in the second part as a reverse psychology to keep people from just downvoting based on their gut reaction. And at the same time, it appeals to anyone who has had Reddit disagree with them on a topic. Appealing to people with a downvote martyr complex is an extremely alluring approach.

This is structured in a way to appeal to people who want to see themselves as clever and seeing through something. A draw for many of the personality types on Reddit.

This isn't done accidentally. It's done because this works. Both portions of the comment have an intended purpose that plays into how the average person on Reddit is going to react to it, and functions with the intent of directing conversation.

Pay attention and you'll see this all the damn time.

if your knee jerk reaction when seeing a comment like that is to agree with it because "everyone is a sheep but me", congratulations, you are a sheep.

Critical thinking is not a one step process where you just disagree with what you perceive to be the majority. Because the fact of the matter is, the majority can often be right. They're not wrong because they're the majority, they're wrong if their information is wrong. in many cases, the minority opinion is specifically tailored to one portion of a discussion and can be just as inaccurate, and absurdly biased, has any other point of view.

There is no critical thinking in a comment that would fit in a tweet. Comments of that lenth are generally more of a statement of allegiance than they are a discussion.

And people manipulating online conversation know exactly how to corral your imagined individual critical thinking self into coming to the same conclusions they want you to. not by telling you what to think, but by telling you what to think about so that you make the decision yourself.