The whole “Pitting so-and-so” is not a universal convention, and it only came about when Discourse forced us to change the rules about Pit threads that had insults in them toward posters. Otherwise, linking to a Pit thread with an insulting title puts an insult outside of the Pit into the thread with the link, which then violates our rules.
But we’ve always had thread titles like this one…
Which by your reasoning is about anyone who believes Trump’s tweets but no, that was just a thread about Sam Stone. It’s unusual for a Pit thread to be about a general subject and still mention a poster’s name in the title. In fact, this is the only one I can think of that’s similar to this one:
And that also led to the assumption that the thread was Pitting Uzi, because you don’t mention a person’s name in a Pit thread title unless you’re targeting them. That’s the only real standard I see.
There is also this Pit thread:
While it was a larger discussion of Hamas and Israel, it very much targeted Babale, which is why the name is in the thread title.
But it’s really easy. If you don’t want to target a person, don’t mention their name in the thread. And don’t get indignant if people think you are targeting them. That’s ridiculous.