It looks very much like a concerted attack of some kind. The spam seems quite ineffective, so I'm wondering if the "real" attack is trying to get the moderators to hell-ban a legitimate person to silence them or something.

I dunno, its really weird. Its hard for me to take this spam at face value, I can't imagine that this website is a good target for such spam. Its clearly just here to annoy the moderators and make them tired vs... something. Reminds me of Starcraft Muta Harass: you're attacking the APM and attention-span of the opponent, not actually trying to straight up win with Muta. If that makes any sense.

    function modifyElements(pSel, cSel, rxStr) {
        const regex = new RegExp(rxStr, 'i');
        const pEls = document.querySelectorAll(pSel);
        pEls.forEach(pEl => {
            const fEl = pEl.querySelector(cSel);
            if (fEl && regex.test(fEl.textContent)) {
                pEl.style.display = 'none';
            }
        });
    }
    
    let rx = /(hi are u lonely|want (an )?ai gf?)/i;
    
    modifyElements(".athing.comtr", ".comment", rx);