Dave Blanchard, who runs the public radio show Wild Card, noticed strange activity in the Spotify comments for an episode with writer Elizabeth Gilbert. The comments were gibberish, like "Ah, OK, M-H" and "Gilgamesh quit and I'm crying," which he assumed were bots. But they interacted with each other and even noticed when he deleted them, posting "so it deleted my com."

Blanchard reported the issue to Spotify and shared screenshots in NPR's Slack. Hannah Chinn, a younger Gen Z colleague, immediately recognized the behavior as kids, not bots. Their display names featured special characters and emoji, and their profile pictures were cartoon characters. They used short phrases and extra exclamation points, typical of teens.

Chinn explained that as a homeschooled kid with limited social media, they used unconventional internet spaces to talk to friends, like Google Docs with hidden text. This behavior felt familiar, so Chinn wrote a response to share in Slack, showing their housemate first to avoid sounding harsh to older NPR colleagues.