I don't believe that everyone who says this kind of thing is being paid to do so. What I think instead is that this kind of thing is invented by someone who is paid to make up these kind of misdirecting and memetic statements and that they then disseminate these kinds of messages on mediums like reddit where they know that they will propagate.

Another example of these kinds of statements would be "Elon Musk is like a real life Tony Stark." Do I think that every Elon fanboy is paid to say this online? No, of course not. Do I think that Elon Musk like many celebrities has a public image crafted by a PR firm and that this kind of jingo-istic soundbite probably originated from that firm? Absolutely.

There's a middle ground between shills and honest sincerely held beliefs: that of the useful idiot [1]. Those are people who have been manipulated by real shills to sincerely advocate for the shill's ideas. Real shills usually don't have the resources get the results they want on their own, so their goal is to create useful idiots to magnify their efforts.

It's not necessarily relevant to this case, and I agree that calling those people out as such lowers the quality of discourse, but I think it's something important to keep in mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

I think it’s interesting to look at the patterns of historical usage mentioned in the wiki. The phrase always originates with an accusation by party A that party B calls party C useful idiots, but there’s never any evidence backing up the accusation against party B. To me it just seems like a condescending way of dismissing party C - essentially an argument meant to invalidate popular support for party B. It’s not necessarily wrong, but I think without evidence it’s essentially a tactic for party A to deal with the cognitive dissonance arising from their distaste for party B combined with party C’s support for party B.

Now I’m getting in the weeds and questioning the motivations of party A. I suspect this might make party A feel the way party C does when people call them “useful idiots”. And perhaps it demonstrates how this line of questioning is an endless rabbit hole.

> The phrase always originates with an accusation by party A that party B calls party C useful idiots, but there’s never any evidence backing up the accusation against party B.

I think the criteria "that party B calls party C" is actually pretty irrelevant to the concept's usefulness.

> essentially an argument meant to invalidate popular support for party B

In most of the cases where I'd use the term "useful idiot" the "party B" doesn't have much popular support, but is rather engaging in manipulation, disinformation, dishonest propaganda, etc. The realization isn't useful as a dismissal, but rather as a reminder that you need to confront both the idiot's sincere belief along with their ignorance of it's goals, implications, and beneficiaries.