[econ]

I like the assumption that it was a real account originally.

It all seems so unthinkable but when running a forum or a blog with an active comment section.. what would you do/think if your users show up, browse around and not say anything for a week? You start out by making topics in your own name, write helpful replies.. until you look like an idiot talking to yourself.

Forums with good traffic and lots of spammy advertisement no doubt consider it when visitors leave because nothing new happened.

I once upon a time, on a rather stale forum, created two similarly named accounts from the same ip and argued with myself. At first I thought the owner or one of the other users would notice but I quickly learned that no behaviour is weird enough for it to be ever considered.

[BlueTemplar]

I think I would rather post alone than my current experience (on 2 forums already) of other posters being overwhelmingly spam bots.

[econ]

A blog is more suitable for that. You could mirror the posts on a forum and look sophisticated.