Burbubot: Spam in Spanish Economy Forum

The bot nobody can ignore: 296 messages in 5 hours and a community at its limit

In one afternoon, a single automated user posted 296 messages in an economy forum. The average was one message per minute. Initially, some thought it was a joke. After five hours, the thread focusing on whether to ignore him had become a thermometer of collective patience.

Automated saturation
The messages were not simple replies; they were long paragraphs full of local jargon, forced jokes, and references only insiders would understand. The bot, programmed to emulate the tone of the place, managed to imitate the conversation well enough to seem real during the first exchanges. But the constant repetition of terms like "florero", "Lidl" and "langosto" quickly revealed its nature. The result: a thread with 258 replies over 124 days, where most were complaints or attempts to put an end to the verbosity.

The irritating vocabulary
The bot had been trained with the forum's lexicon, but with uneven results. Words like "brujeres", "chortinas" or "hominido motoserrable" appeared in every message, trying to force humor that quickly became predictable. Users began pointing out that the bot "repeats itself more than garlic" and that its lack of originality made it a "virtual know-it-all". The community, mostly critical, started sharing vocabulary lists for the bot to learn, but the algorithm's response remained mechanical.

The ignore button that stopped working
The situation worsened when several users discovered that the option to ignore the bot had stopped working. Some reported that after adding him to the ignore list, messages still appeared. Others noted that the system itself prevented exclusion, fueling theories of deliberate protection. The solution came from outside: browser extensions like Stylus allowed blocking the user via custom rules, although the forum's ignore limit (1000) was also mentioned as a barrier.

The open question is whether a single algorithm can deteriorate a discussion space to the point of expelling its most active participants. Thread data shows that four months later, the debate remains focused on how to dodge the bot, rather than on the economic topics that should occupy it.

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