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Comment by aasasd | Hacker News Reader

1.4 million comments on a single post? Holy crap! I was previously wondering on Reddit, what kind of vapid self-importance compels people to comment in threads that already have over 100-200 comments—when new ones go straight to the bottom and no one sees them afterwards. But this is on scale of some mental illness, unless I seriously misunderstand something about Facebook comments.

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My guess: on FB, it steers your post to your friends, so you aren't talking to the 1.4M so much as chatting with your friends about a meme that 1.4M people are also chatting with their friends about.

Just a guess, though. I don't actually FB.

I've noticed that whenever I end up on a Facebook page for some local business I'm adding on OpenStreetMap. Comments that do nothing more than @mention people publicly. It just seems weird to do that.

Facebook is a weird place if you don't have an account. And of course, whenever you scroll down for some details (and hopefully a link to that business' proper website) you get slammed in the face with a dialogue box that asks you to create an account or login, so my engagement with Facebook usually ends there.

> Comments that do nothing more than @mention people publicly. It just seems weird to do that.

It's grown to be a more common way to share something with a friend. Less clicks than sharing in private messages, and also more inviting to conversation — which would be shared not only between you two, but also open to other friends like yours. Mostly those @mentions and conversations are very casual, like "me: @friendName -- @friendName: OMG this is so @frank -- frank: I'm in this picture and I don't like it". All of which makes perfect sense for mindless positive chit-chat.

Facebook shows comments from your friends highlighted in your feed.

So if one of your friends comments with the one millionth comment, you can end up seeing the post and your friend’s comment In your feed. So while no one can read all comments - your friends are likely to see yours.

And then y'all can communicate in thread too. So it's a little microcosm.

I've seen a lot of this recently, both on the types of posts in the article and on the posts of controversial / extremist right-wing politicians like MTG.

So it's actually sharing with added notes, like quote tweets. Indeed makes a bit more sense now, with this piece of knowledge.

(Perhaps once upon a time I'll end up also finally figuring out how the hell comments on Tumblr work. Not that I'll have practical use for that anymore.)

>I was previously wondering on Reddit, what kind of vapid self-importance compels people to comment in threads that already have over 100-200 comments—when new ones go straight to the bottom and no one sees them afterwards.

It works in similar way as here. The post have 145 comments (right now) and yet I'm adding another one.

Nah, replies I can understand. Top-level comments, not so much. Plus on Reddit they tend to be of pretty much no informational or entertainment value, essentially just ‘Oh yeah man!’ quipped into the void of the bottom of the comment section.

this ;)

Your friends will see your comment in fb, so there is an incentive to comment even when there is already millions of other comments.

Don't worry - their comment response to the meme page is annoyingly broadcast into the timeline of every one of their friends.

Because the culture is somehow to post (and even up-vote) vacuous comments to begin with.

Almost always when I find myself in Reddit comments because something's interesting I wish it were HN, and am shocked a lot of the time that people have time for such drivel. Duolingo too. Yes. Me too. Haha. Nice work buddy. Looks good. No. This is lame. Lol. Why? What's the point?

But then, we can take this further, there's more thought in our comments, and on HN in general, but ultimately not any 'point' either. (Obviously there's the occasional hugely noteworthy comment on HN, but then I'm sure there is on Reddit too, albeit fewer pro rata.)