Well, there are few possible reasons:

1. They are newbeyers and don't know yet what is this stance even yet;
2. They forget that the stance drops down when level is synced and should re-enabled manually.

Both can go in combination or separately. As for them ignoring messages in chat... next time this happens check their interface language. Considering you are at Phoenix, you can just bump into French/Deutsch players who doesn't know English. Or can bump into somebody who's from neither of "localized" countries and still doesn't know English. The painful reality of EU servers.

The only weird part is your mention about them turning on and turning off the stance... this sounds like trolling tbh, though there is a possibility they geniunely don't understand what they're doing wrong.