And so Richard is back, and here is my prediction of how his behaviors will play out.
Richard will continue to exhibit classic behaviors of a person with an addiction. As I noted in a previous post (included below), he is (and clearly was, prior to his banning) unable to control his behavior here. Asking an addict to control his behavior, or giving him a 'second chance', or asking him to modify his behavior is pointless. That is, each of these alternatives has a 0% chance of success. Because, truthfully, one is not asking the addict - one is asking the addiction. And addictions do not respond to reason, to pleading, to being asked nicely, to being ignored, or to being argued with. An addiction can only respond to whatever the addict needs in order to get high. Nothing else matters. This is true across all kinds of addiction, whether to substances or behaviors. So to stop the addictive behavior one takes away the means to get high - there is no other way. When deprived of the opportunity to get a high, addicts will engage in whatever behaviors they can in order to get the high their mind-body system needs. These behaviors obviously differ among addictions, but they have the following characteristics (among others): manipulation, playing the victim, and minimizing. In Richard's case, this behavior has been to write to Rick to "let me subscribe to the group because some informants were still talking about me and I wanted to post a few replies." This sentence is a textbook example of the above three characteristics of addict behavior: manipulation and playing the victim ('let me subscribe to the group because some informants were still talking about me'), and minimizing ('I wanted to post a few replies'). And so Richard is back and, within a relatively short period of time, his behavior will be exactly the same as it was previously. It cannot be stopped by Richard, no matter how much we might like that to be the case. It will only be stopped by him being banned again. It is not that Richard can choose to leave FFL or change the character of his posts: Richard cannot not post on FFL**. To put it another way: If in the very unlikely event that Richard decided that he would like to stop posting or change the nature of his posts, he wouldn't be able to do so. Even if no one FFL were never to interact with him or refer to him from this moment on, he will continue to troll the group. Rick let me subscribe to the group because some informants were still talking about me and I wanted to post a few replies.So, I promised not to out anyone's real name - now this is funny - since I subscribed three people in the group have outed me. You can't make this stuff up, Alex. LoL! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <j_alexander_stanley@...> wrote : Don't look at me. When I saw the subscription request, I left it for Rick to handle. Richard made no attempt to conceal his identity, so Rick approved the subscription, knowing fully well who it is. Rick's kind of a softie about stuff like that; after some period of time, he usually lets people back in. Years ago, there was another person who was far more deserving of being permanently booted, and Rick even let him back in. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Rick or Alex, If memory serves this arsehole has been barred from posting. Please send him back to wherever he's been dragging out his miserable existence since he last wasted everyone's time here.