My theory is you can tell the paid trolls because they perpetually post about specific comparisons to other countries vs just posting news. Plus they just openly perpetually post bad news stories about other countries.
Suspicious "wonder if he's a paid troll" post:
1) Our new tankX is out and from the figures it is 10x better than country Y's tank. Look at the deficiencies in the Y tank compared to our X tank.
2) country Y's Crime/Poverty/divorce rate is up!
Regular Poster:
1) Our new tankX is out and here are the specs...
2) wouldn't even consider posting about some other country's crime/poverty/divorce rate. Wtf why would I?
I have the majority of the posts in the
Team USA thread (hmm self promo in a 50 cent thread haha) . I could easily fall into going the troll route but I am careful not to (well about 99.99% of the time) I just post things that I believe people who are curious about the USA may find interesting to read. No bad finger pointing.