Wow, how bizarre. Am I weird in jumping to the conspiracy theorist conclusion that this is some sort of experiment on us, like an A/B test to see what kinds of comment works on what kind of thread?
No, this is someone getting a bot some karma so it can eventually contribute to the manipulation of posts (i.e. getting things upvoted to the front page).
Yes, either accounts need a certain amount of karma to make their votes matter or higher karma gives more weight to the vote. Then when you post links that promote your own content or business you can upvote them with your army of bots
