Don’t ease into it at all. Wait for a moment where it would be funny, then go whole hog with it. Treat it like a joke… but then just keep going. Never go back. Don’t even acknowledge there is a back. Pretend this is how you’ve always talked and they’re insane if they think otherwise.
No. Thinking about the panda is involuntary in that scenario. Typing up and submitting an explicitly unwanted response is not involuntary. It’s a thing a person chooses to do expressly against the wishes of the person making the request.