I know this is the “Trolls Resurrections” thread, but do we really need to be telling trolls how to resurrect themselves?
Oh, no. Octopus has that down pat. He has bumped his own troll thread no fewer than 8 times, blessing us at the SDMB with his attention-whore needs:
All on his way to having a 5:1 post ratio over the 2nd-most active poster in his own pit thread:
308 posts out of 1,348 (currently) gives Octo 22.8% of the posts in his own pitting. 
And why does he do it? Because, being the ultimate narcissist:
I kinda read Octo in the voice of Groucho Marx, one of the all-time “look at me” comedians. Just not as funny.
If you got those bumps by checking “all posts by [user]”, it shows the “x months later” even if they’re responding to a bump. If you expand the hidden replies it’ll show you who actually bumped it.
Not to detract from anything else about him. The fact that he posts almost exclusively in the Pit - with regular detours to ATMB to complain about moderation - says plenty about why he’s here.
No shit, Sherlock.
Ahh, dammit, I see what I did. You’re right. Shouldn’t have filtered by user: as you said that gave me the wrong impression of what was happening.
My bad, Octo. You’re no more a narcissist than the rest of us (who have 22% of the posts in their own pit thread).
Whatever happened to Octupus, anyway? Do they still post?
The above is why personalized Pit threads for certain posters are pointless and counterproductive. No, you won’t be able to shame or reason with them to get them to change their ways (the Sam one is proof of the latter).
They have a point and they have a purpose.
That is neither the point nor the purpose of those threads.
You don’t open a Pit thread to get someone to be better. Not generally. You open a Pit thread because someone is frustrating the hell out of you and you need to vent. Vent and commiserate with other posters sick of someone’s bullshit. It’s like yelling in anger at your television; the person you are yelling at can’t possibly hear you (nor would they do anything if they did) but it makes you feel better.
Every once in a blue moon someone actually responds to criticism from a Pit thread and improves. But it’s rare. I can only think of one occasion off the top of my head, and it was a minor change which didn’t address everyone’s gripes with their behavior. But it did actually help. A little. That’s still not why those threads are being created though.
The Pit in general isn’t a place to try to fix problems. That’s what ATMB is for. It’s just a place for people to rant without getting in trouble.
It’s rare that you can do this in any other context either. The principal reason to interact with idiots is to rebut their stupidity for the benefit of other people who might be reading.
I’m obviously not just a lurker, but there are plenty of threads where I do lurk or say little because I don’t know much about it - and I certainly appreciate the more knowledgable people’s efforts in rebutting stupidity those threads. It’s not wasted effort.
Yup, if there’s a place to vent your frustrations with an intransigent idiot, it’s then much easier to go back to the more polite standards of discourse in other forums and patiently rebut the stupidity.
A blue moon happens on average every 30 months.* Are you sure improvements happen that often?
*Average being the key word. We had two calendrical blue moons in January and March, 2018.
I will say that DrDeth has been through the Pit quite a bit. Almost always for cause. And several times they’ve improved IMHO, but then backslide, or suffer Foot-in-Mouth disease and then double down earning much ire.
But he’s the only one I can think of off the top of my head who’s improved their habits, or at least, more than the “lay low from the mods until the last incident passes recent memory” sort of improvement.
And I wish DD would be consistent in thinking through their own prejudices and kneejerk defensiveness when someone calls them out.
That’s who I had in mind as a matter of fact.
Half the time I learn more from the rebuttals. There’s something about explaining something 16 different ways that means that, even if the troll doesn’t get it, others may.
I give you bootb:
This is in regards to proposed legislation in Massachusetts to reduce prison time for those prisoners who donate organs. Like some other posters, I had assumed this was satire, but said poster insists in follow-up posts that he’s dead serious.
He’s not serious. Totally trolling.
Several lawmakers are considering proposing sentence reduction for organ donation. Nor expected to be successful, but the proposers are serious.
Yes, that was the article that prompted the initial Thread. Our resident troll is not serious though. He just wants some attention.
“Everyone look at meeeeee!”
He’s such a massive loser.
Idk, he’s often posted things that were off.
Well, yeah-If he was just a mediocre loser he wouldn’t get the same amount of attention.