I Spent a Full Day Fighting an AI — The Answer Was 3 Sentences Long

I almost wasted an entire day because of a button that would not go away.

Not a bug. Not a broken page. Just a feature called “Public forum” on my Whop store — sitting there like it owned the place.

I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for it. And I was determined to delete it.

What followed was one of the most frustrating — and honestly, kind of funny — AI experiences I’ve had since I started building online.

It Started With a Simple Question

When I set up my Whop store — The Playbook — I noticed there was a “Public forum” showing up under the Your Access section. I hadn’t created a public forum. I didn’t want one. My store is for members, not a public chatroom.

So I did what any reasonable person does: I asked an AI to help me delete it.

Three AI Assistants. Zero Results.

First, I asked Happycapy. It walked me through deleting the Public forum experience in Whop. I followed the steps. It seemed to work — the forum disappeared from the settings.

Then I checked the Townhall. Still there.

We went back and forth — delete, refresh, still there. Delete again, wait, still there. At one point I literally watched the screen like a hawk. The Townhall went empty. Victory… for about ten minutes.

Then it came back.

I tried Whop’s own AI assistant. Same dance. It “deleted” the forum. Forum came back. I even went to Google AI. Same thing — confident-sounding instructions that ultimately changed nothing.

If I could have reached through the screen, I would have slapped all three of them.

I Took a Breath. I Asked the Right Question.

After almost a full day of this, I stopped. I took a breath. And instead of asking how do I delete it, I asked something different:

“Is it actually possible to remove the Public forum from the Your Access section and from the Townhall?”

The answer took three sentences.

The Public forum is a built-in Whop platform feature. It’s part of how Whop works. Whether you use it or not, whether you “delete” it or not — Whop automatically re-adds it. It shows in the Townhall because that’s how Whop surfaces your products for discovery. You’re not supposed to remove it. It’s not a bug. It’s by design.

An entire day. For three sentences.

What I Actually Learned

Here’s the thing — I don’t fully blame the AI tools. The first question I kept asking was how to delete it. So every AI tried to answer that question. They gave me steps to delete it, because I asked for steps to delete it. None of them stopped and said “wait, why do you think this is deletable?”

That’s a problem with how AI assistants are designed right now. They’re optimized to answer the question you asked, not to question whether your premise is correct. There’s no built-in “actually, hold on” response.

The lesson I walked away with:

• When AI gives you circular answers — doing the same thing and expecting different results — step back and change the question.
• Ask if something is possible before asking how to do it.
• AI is a tool, not an oracle. It works with the question you give it. If the question is wrong, the answers will keep being wrong too.

The Punchline

After all of that — the failed deletions, the temporary wins, the Townhall going empty and filling back up, the three different AI assistants confidently leading me in circles — the answer was sitting right there.

You cannot delete the Public forum. Whop puts it there on purpose. It will always come back. It exists whether you want it to or not.

I spent an entire day fighting a feature that was never broken.

And the AI that finally told me the truth? It was the same Whop AI I had been using the whole time — I just finally asked it the right question.

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If you’re building on Whop and want to skip the trial-and-error phase, I put together everything I’ve learned about setting up a digital product store — automations, email sequences, and the stuff nobody tells you — inside The Playbook. Save yourself a day.