He decided to build his own bot. He called it "Purong Pinoy Auto Liker."
Rosa smiled, revealing her gold tooth. "That's my boy. That's the Pure Pinoy way."
"I just wanted to help people get likes," Kenji whispered.
But lately, a new flavor of post had spoiled the soup. auto liker facebook pure pinoy
Rosa rolled her eyes. These weren’t real friends or real engagement. They were digital ghosts. Users would pay five pesos or trade "like for like" with bots. The posts would explode with a thousand likes in ten minutes, but the comments section was a desert.
"Good morning po, admin! Pa-auto like po sa bagong profile pic ko! Sana umabot ng 1k likes!"
Then Marites, the fish ball vendor, commented: "Forgiven. Next time, share my post manually, anak." He decided to build his own bot
"Lola," he said. "I'll earn my tuition the real way. By working."
Kenji was the first to comment. He typed: "Lola, I love you."
Rosa looked at Kenji. Kenji looked at the floor. The plastic chair creaked. That's the Pure Pinoy way
The trap was simple. "Free 500 likes for the first 50 users! Comment 'PB' (Pure Bait) to join!"
The Purong Pinoy Auto Liker website is now a dead link. But if you visit the Facebook group today, you’ll still see people asking for likes. Only now, the admins have a pinned post:
Kenji spent the next month fixing what he broke. He didn't have money to pay back the victims, but he had skill.
The post got 47 likes. Slowly. One by one. By real people. At 3:00 AM, when the bots were asleep, Kenji refreshed the page. 47 likes. It was the smallest number he had ever seen in his life.
He closed his laptop. He walked outside to the sari-sari store. He took the broom from the corner and started sweeping the yard.