This gets reposted now, a day (ish) after I saw someone comment "is this an instance of the XY problem?" I suspect that people are mining data from ("paying at

This gets reposted now, a day (ish) after I saw someone comment "is this an instance of the XY problem?" I suspect that people are mining data from ("paying attention to") certain posted keywords and then re-posting. How might I disprove the null hypothesis that people are just repackaging highly voted comments? How might I convince myself that I am wrong or right? Please show your work or cite sources.