No it doesn't work that way. It's a nice theory, but I've been a mod on a national sub for a while, and I've been on forums since around/before slashdot.

You can very easily overwhelm the signal with noise. The plethora of independents means nothing if only a few of them get heard.

Matter of fact, with some pushing, you can have one "independent" dominate a large portion of the channel. At some juncture the network effect takes over and the process becomes self sustaining, you just need to play on people's/your target markets biases well.

This is a people problem, and people are getting way too good and understanding and manipulating the biases of other people.