What one considers a growth hack, another considers never-going-to-visit-that-domain.
I think I would have posted the usual “previous discussions” and then also posted “By the way, I’m building this discussion aggregator blah blah” and linked.
Submitting a popular post to introduce the need for the discussion aggregator will work. His execution was just a bit ham fisted.
I'll also buy a custom, less spammy looking, domain. The .pw extension is what I use for my main website which I have chosen at the time because it was cheap.