I sent him a message thanking him for his amusing summary of Wolfpack and he quickly replied back to me. We played a game together Friday evening. He was a great guy, eager to learn how things work and to play a serious game. He also had a good sense of humor, so it was a lot of fun.
And we sank 22,000 tons.
He allowed me to suggest the approach, and set up the intercept. I explained what I was doing and why, and answered his questions. I gave him a rundown on getting a good TDC solution. I let him manage the attack on a small 3 ship convoy, unescorted. He sank two ships by torpedo, and one with a combination deck gun and torpedo. I like to think I helped get a new guy into subsims.
In my experience since the game released in March, I've played over 100 hours and 96~99% of the random players I've joined in a game get serious pretty quickly when the first "Contact!" is shouted out. Even the rare goofball respects a serious player enough to join the effort.
My philosophy has always been to give people the benefit of the doubt. I like to think of myself as an ambassador for serious subsim play.