However, this plan concerns me due a certain new forum member who was blatantly posting junk to increase his post-count.
If you are talking about who I think you are talking about, this user has already been banned.
You also bring up another good point though. An "Ignore User" feature would be useful, as would "Ignore Thread" and "Ignore Forum Section" options. Of course, availability of these sorts of features is really up to SMF in the end.
For now, unfortunately, there is not really a good way to automatically ignore threads (or users) that you're not interested in.
I will delete "inflating post count" posts if it seems to be getting out of hand.
ScottyZ