[I don't know about some people *cough* Vandroiy *cough*, but I don't see the people that support Pirate as being paid off or dishonest, just ignorant.
To be fair, most of the times I mentioned these things, I just wanted to see their reaction. IMO, most of them indeed fall under the category "conveniently ignorant" -- or at least I couldn't tell which it is.
Still, changing the reasoning doesn't make the actions any better.
Yeah, I doubt that anyone was directly paid to say anything. No evidence of that.
But consider: when one is invested in a Ponzi, one has an incentive for it to succeed as long as possible--for you to make some money off of it yourself. If one had thousands of coins with the Pirate, you wouldn't say a word against him until your principal is back in your wallet. In fact, you would probably say how brilliant and reliable he was--
especially if you had doubts about him. I think this must have happened--not everyone is so stupid.