Could you elaborate on what you mean by “just manipulative”? Realistically a person can only control themselves and a person can only manage to have a deep, nuanced debate with one person at a time. As I said, people are hungry for discourse so mics and speakers make sense so those gathered can hear. The only thing I can think of is that you’re accusing the people who step up to the mic of being plants meant to serve up softballs. If so, do you have evidence of that? Seems like AI and face recognition and social media posts could pretty easily find out how true that theory is. Could be. Idk. I don’t think they’re all plants but they could be.