I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, but you could improve your datastructure and get your is_master() sub a lot shorter (or even ditch it entirely). Instead of an array, put your bot masters in a hash:

my %masters = (
    John    => 1, 
    Paul    => 1, 
    George  => 1, 
    Ringo   => 1, 
);
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And then replace all calls to is_master() with exists $masters{$name}.