Good thinking! I am still worried that we, the ones figuring this out, are too few compared to the Bitcointalk users (and even more, the people owning Bitcoin).
I posted a couple of times about this but I feel like too few have read that. So more posts about this, the merrier.
100s of threads were made by newbie accounts on "omg Bitcoin will get to 100k USD in a year" all November.
100s of threads were made by newbie accounts on "omg Bitcoin will get to 4k USD" all January.
And this was here on bitcointalk.
But, nooo, there was no manipulation at all. Or maybe, a little...
Just thinking out loud, it's not that I am disputing what you are saying but have you also considered if this same 100s of newbie accounts are not your usual Btctalk members shitposting for some bounty campaign to increase the number of posts they have and not necessarily spreading FUD?