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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35578 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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There's a whole industry built around making websites look more active than they actually are. Whether that's paying people pennies per comment, using bots/gpt, or copying threads/comments from elsewhere. You can find thousands (maybe millions, lol) of reposts on reddit where the top comments are the same as top comments from previous threads, or from comments on the url that was posted (like youtube comments).

Making a website appear more active helps bring in and retain new users. I personally think TikTok uses this in order to bring in more content providers; they see their video gets thousands upon thousands of likes and stick around. I think its all inflated. And so many non-sense comments.

I also think that some websites/channels just get too large. If you go on a popular youtube channel and leave a comment, the chances you'll ever get a reply are slim to none, despite there being thousands or millions of people flooding onto that page. Go to a smaller channel and you can have long, thoughtful conversations in the comment section. Same happens on Reddit. The average comment in /r/askreddit will have no replies. Make a comment in themotte ("back in the day") and you were almost guaranteed a reply, no matter what you said. Even in subs that are fairly inactive these days, like theschism, will still result in replies if you make a comment.

I wonder what the critical mass for an online community is? What's the point where you're less likely to get a reply? What's the point where you're less likely to even have someone read your comment?

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