Here is what happened and why I did what I did.
The Realist joined the forum and started a thread. Kind of a snarky BS / Trollish post but over the years a lot of new members are a little intimidated when first posting here so they try to show they know their shit.
I welcomed him. And then sincerely respond to his original post and try to draw him into a normal conversation. Don't care if he agrees with me.
He doesn't respond and instead starts two more threads.
Pretty much different variations of the same theme. Everyone is stupid, he has all the answers, and he can prove this by hindsight.
I merged his three threads and change the title. I did this for two reasons, first to get him into a conversation about the subjects he's posting about. The second to get others to have conversations about what he was posting instead of insulting him and dismissing what he was posting.
I then send him a private message again welcoming him to the forum and explaining why I merged his threads.
Personally I found it hilarious that he says we should trade Lillard because the rest of the team is junk but then posts that we can use that same junk to trade for Anthony Davis. But still trying to turn this into a conversation I ask him about it as I did with many of his other posts.
He starts to meltdown so I have to delete and edit a few of his posts.
I send him a second private message explaining why I deleted and edited some of his posts and asking him not to do it anymore.
Everything I did was to be as welcoming as possible and to encourage conversation and debate while trying not to allow this to turn into some argument and insult fest.
He then makes a new thread stating:
"I admit that I jumped on the bandwagon when the Blazers beat the Rockets in the first round in 2014. However, the team is terrible now. This team might not even win 25 games in the west. I hope you enjoy the suck Blazer fans. I am going to jump on the Warriors bandwagon, so I can enjoy the Dub Nation Dynasty with multiple titles. They have a young core that is poised to compete for years. Steph>Lillard, Klay>CJ and Hendo, Barnes and Iggy>Aminu, Dray>Davis and Vonleh, Bogut>Plumlee. Not to mention they also have Shaun Livingston and Festus Ezeli."
In the hour he's been here he's gone from being a Blazer fan to not being a Blazer fan, that the team sucks, the GM sucks, the fans suck and that everyone here sucks and that he doesn't want to be here anymore. I look at all of that and it seems to me that he's just here to troll. It has nothing to do with me agreeing with him or if he fits some sort of group think that you're now claiming exists here. He's not here to discuss the Blazers, he's here to claim how much smarter he is while trying to start shit. When that couldn't happen he said he was leaving. Fine, he wanted to leave so I decided to help with that and make it so he won't be back.
