What's with all the strange one-liner replies getting posted?

[itsjustasprain]

I was wondering about all the weird one-liner replies (such as "Yes. I think the same as you.") that keep popping up on the boards and decided to do a little further digging. These turn out to be some kind of semi-automatic junk posts put up by newbie or throwaway accounts for the most part.

To see them, pick any short reply that seems weird, disjointed or out of place (such as "We don't have to do this, but it's helpful advice."), and do the following:

1. Plug it into the Community search field at the top of the screen, putting it within double quotes: "We don't have to do this, but it's helpful advice."
2. When the Results page comes up, change the Sorted By: order from Best Match to Date (descending Down Arrow).
3. Click on the Advanced heading, and change the View results by from Topics to Specific Posts.

That will give you a detailed list of all the throwaway accounts currently using that post. It's weird and puzzling at the same time. There is nothing to be gained by any of it.

Other current randomly generated posts:

• "How exactly was this negative unwarranted?" (This one was out of context everywhere that I found it.)
• "Exactly right. Thanks for answering."
• "Thank you for the helpful and encouraging insight. Appreciated very much."
• "They're probably referring to ebay's Worldwide Shipping Program."
• "Thanks for answering."
• "I am not sure what you are talking about."
• "We don't have to do this, but it's helpful advice."
• "Yes. I think the same as you."
• "This was the wrong thing to do, and you can report the seller for this."

If you then pick any of the accounts that posted a comment above and look at their other replies, you will find more one-liners from the same collection being posted elsewhere. (I found one case this morning where the same poster used two of them in the same thread, just four replies apart.)

All I can guess here is that foreign users (not necessarily the Sri Lanka bunch, but ones that do not seem to know the English language) are being given a list of "sample" comments from somewhere, from which they can post their choice, but so many of the posted replies are so wildly out of context for what's being discussed that I cannot see the point of it at all. Just to collect badges?

[mam98031]

Oh CLEARLY it is a game.