I frequent an IRC room for the popular webcomic xkcd, and this reminded me of years ago, when someone conducted an awful April Fool's Day "prank". There were three different bots in the room and I guess one of the maintainers thought it would be funny to get them to respond to certain phrases of affirmation or agreement with similar things like "indeed" "quite" "very much so", or something along those lines. But then they would also respond to these words if another bot said them, so you got ~30 messages of bots all agreeing with each other once one of them saw something it liked. They eventually failed to keep up with each other, or maybe somebody was cautious enough to somehow make sure it didn't go on infinitely, I never asked. But this happened repeatedly for hours. Not even the worst prank to occur in that channel, though.
I guess bots can be fun ONCE, but then it gets tiresome. Perhaps hubski can find a new botfree home.
Meanwhile, your story of bots responding to certain phrases reminds me of an experience I had teaching in a special needs classroom. I was the supply teacher. There were about 10 intermediate-level kids. From time to time, I would say a word that made one kid fall out of his chair and crash onto the floor. (!!??)
The other kids would say to me, "He doesn't like that word, Miss."
"Don't use that word, Miss. He doesn't like that word."
It was kind of random. Otherwise, they were a good class.