gone overboard with links

i was at this forum and i saw they had tons of posts in the 6-800 word range ... but 100 words were a kw and another 50 were a second kw and all the kw linked to either of two sites all kw1 to site 1 kw2 to site2

im not 100% sure wheter or not the poster was affiliated with the forum or just a member... im pretty sure he was affiliated in some way with the target site ...

im wondering is this just a case of overzealous nubstick website owner that doesnt understand SEO and thinks more = branding or is there some benefit to having 150+ links in a post to your site/s ?

this is dumb right? if nothing else it looks retarded as hell and as i real person i wouldnt click one of those links they look spammy and desperate