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The social side of Goodreads isn't for readers. It's for people who want to be seen to be reading. It's the kind of people who badly want to be seen as intelligent, and well-read. Read the reviews of books. They're terribly pretentious, and packed with the same kind of faux-insite Quora is. I'd be embarrassed to be a regular user.

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The social side of Hacker News isn't for hackers. It's for people who want to be seen to be hackers. It's the kind of people who badly want to be seen as intelligent, and well-informed. Read the posts here. They're terribly pretentious, and packed with the same kind of faux-insite Quora is. I'd be embarrassed to be a regular user.

And we don't even read the articles. A LOT of comments (this one for example) are made only with the submission title as context.

The people you're describing do exist. But you deciding they're the typical case says more about you than it does about them.

Many people love reading and cataloging their books and connecting with a few friends online, all earnestly.

Sure, that's entirely fair. I was trying to delineate tool usage from social usage with my first sentence, but maybe I failed to do that. I appreciate the feedback.

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