Online Comment Culture

Being an active commenter felt like being an internet socialite, part of an elite society of people who put their voice out there instead of lurked. And my fellow internet socialites responded in turn. Some upvoted, responded, debated. Some liked what I said, some hated it. A few of my comments made it to the top and became a fountain of dopamine. A few comments made it to the very bottom too.

That can happen with 16 years of commenting history.

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Various estimates of lifetime human acquantainces range from 10,000 to 80,000 people, but actual friendships number only in the hundreds, and that’s being generous. And the number of close friends is on average, only 3-5. So, meeting strangers and turning them into close friends is a rather rare occurence that involves a serious investment of focused social energy, something that is harder to do the older you get. One study showed that in order to form a close friendship, you need to spend 200 hours of interaction time with one person. So, making 5 close friends is a 1000 hour investment, equal to a full time job for half a year.

Comment culture requires your social energy. It’s an interaction with another human being, but one that doesn’t head towards building relationships. Instead, the end result is gaining reputation, fame, and of course, internet points.

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The end result is that comment culture is a series of one-offs with anonymous strangers upvoting you or responding to you, but never befriending you. In comment culture, you are talking to a random sampling of everybody, which is in itself a collective nobody.