Yeah these people are a headache to deal with, and you can tell with a lot of them they get off on knowing how annoying they're being. That's why I don't even bother arguing with them anymore. With these types of users when I warn them I just lock the conversation so they can't reply. Or I'll reply once then lock it right after. They just want to argue, and I know denying them the ability to get the last word drives their neurotic asses up a wall. There's a lot of "I MUST GET THE LAST WORD AT ALL COSTS" autism in the ban appeals too. They just want to argue so I just lock the thread. Then they make a new thread where they sperg out even harder. Then I delete it (it's not even a ban appeal at that point anyway, just sperging out) and revoke their rights to even post in the appeal section. Some even made attempts to flood the ban appeal section. Imagine being this neurotic.
And when a new user instantly starts breaking the rules and acting like that, I usually do end up just permabanning them fairly quickly. I don't play that game where let them rack up 20+ warnings before permabanning them. They clearly joined in bad faith, so I see no reason to let them stick around for very long. It's just usually nobody notices or cares because they were a new user who only made a few dozen posts.
Yeah we've had a fair share of habitual ban evaders on this forum over the years. We're talking guys who made literal dozens (and in one case, possibly 100+) of accounts.
That's why we have the current system in place where you have to explain your situation upon registration, signups have to be manually approved, and we don't allow signups from VPNs. There's a very small number (you could probably count them on your hands) of turbo autists with a virtually infinite amount of time, energy, and motivation...and they'd flood the forum nonstop day in day out. The system we have in place is the only thing stopping them.
Of course we realize that there are some more savvy and determined trolls who manage to slip through the cracks with an alt. We have ways of finding out but even if we don't, this is another reason we're stricter on new accounts. If someone joins and instantly starts breaking the rules, there's a decent chance they've already been banned before on another account, probably a bunch of other accounts. But even if that wasn't the case, if they joined in bad faith, nothing of value was lost by permabanning them anyway.