if the character is so good we can't tell, sure, fine whatever. The problem happens when we can see the strings, at least to me. Some of them you can see the strings on ever post, I don't understand how anybody could find that entertaining....on either end. I suppose HillGoose thought he was "getting one over on people" or whatever, but his character had less depth than a mud puddle and it dragged down many threads.
It's like good magic vs bad magic. Good magic is fine for most people (in small doses at least), but bad magic forces the most eager of toddlers to groan.
But I would distinguish between two different ways of "being able to tell". Some "characters" (and I assume you'd put HillGoose in this category) just post ridiculous material. And so, at least in my opinion, the reason for finding them tiring is that the actual content of what they post is stupid. That's the issue, not the fact that they're "being fake".
On the other hand, you have posters who have made radical ideological shifts that many people don't believe are genuine. Torie mentioned Beet, and he's the primary character I'm thinking of here. In this case, the content of what he posts would barely register on people's radars if he were a new poster with an R-TX avatar. But because of the presumably phony ideological shift, people act as if he's guilty of war crimes or something. Whereas I just plain don't care, because it doesn't really matter to me if folks here are "real" or not.
