Except for the "HEY, EVERYONE. NEW POSTER!!! announcement on their first post.
Which can only be seen on their first post.
Not everyone reads every thread, so a “first” post is likely to be missed by many.
You can easily do a search on their name with an @ in front. e.g. for DeathPool:
https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=%40DeathPool%20order%3Alatest
I think their thinking runs about like this:
Listen you ignorant F***ers! I know you think you’re so smart and so right and I’m wrong. Well you’re just full of it and I totally demand that I have the last word. Somebody on the internet is wrong and it’s you!
Besides, the last thing you said was mean to me and I cannot possibly let that go unchallenged. My ego and love of my own voice is far too large for that. I slap your face with my best formal gloves!
I really don’t think it’s any deeper than childish pique over being thwarted, plus a healthy dollop of bored all day now that SDMB is closed off and youtubers don’t much comment on each other’s comments.
That’s what I did after the fact, when I reported the one person for spamming. I saw lots of posts over the years. So not a drive-by spammer after all. But if you act like and look like a spammer, and I have to go through some effort to determine you’re a normal poster, I’m going to assume you’re a spammer.
But yes, your method totally works.
And the mods have special tools for identifying socks.
Tools with sharp pointy edges and feathery bits poking up at the ends. Tools that would give you nightmares should you be so unlucky to actually see one.
Actually it is just a digital dowsing rod, I don’t understand how it works, but it works surprisingly well.
Here is a representation of my using one.
Throw that one back, he’s under the size limit.
I don’t know, I think it makes sense (from their perspective) that they keep coming back. Trolls aren’t looking for acceptance, their entire goal is winding people up. Banned trolls wound people up to such a degree (from their perspective) that they got kicked out. Why wouldn’t they want to keep coming back to the well? They know they can wind people here up by trolling, and also by being suspected of being a sock.
I think being detected quickly, and getting re-banned with little drama is probably the only thing that will discourage them.
So let’s revisit the thread. There have been a few posts since then. It’s clear now that Stranger was spreading false and ignorant information about vaccine availability in the middle of a horrific pandemic. He was in no way doing his best. I was perhaps impolite but I was objectively correct and as person who has spent a great deal of the last several weeks matching people with vaccines, understandably frustrated with his fucking absurd and ill founded rants.
Fuck that shit.
Revisit which thread???
I see that poster FigNorton is trolling the fuck out of the thread discussing how suicide rates have gone down in the US during covid.
Seems he just can’t STAND the thought that the pet theory that the horrible liberal restrictions on FREEDOM did not cause a mass rush of people to off themselves as was predicted by his sources.
You are a pathetic fuck. I don’t have a hate on for liberals nor do I generally argue against the usefulness of restrictions and other mitigation efforts. Make a fucking point once in a while instead of crying “troll” and waiting for the high fives.
Bite me asshole.
High five, dude!
< goes for high five; misses >
< wanders away looking for a drink >. 
If I hated the left, I would say you are a perfect example rather than the embarrassment you definitely are.
Whatever the fuck that means. You keep on being you.
Umm. . . . that was MY post that you tagged with the troll title. I was mimicking FigNorton/CarnalK at the time. . . but still. . .