Ask HN: How often and why do you only read the comments?

If the link is to Twitter, YouTube, or to a paywalled site that I don't already pay for, I won't follow it. But if the subject seems to be something I'm interested in, then I'll read the comments anyway. Partly in the hopes that I'll be able to suss out what the link said, but mostly to read the discussion of the topic amongst the people here.

Take any book you've read in the past year excepting The Kama Sutra, Illustrated, and open to a random page. Do you remember anything there? Yeah, that's how dumb long-form reading is.

When the article is behind a paywall, I can often still get the meat of the article (or a non-paywalled link) from the comments

Very often, especially if I suspect the article may be ~zero length (Twitter), impossible to quickly skim (YouTube), paywalled, or just low quality.

Even for "higher" quality articles, HN's comments are usually more insightful. And more concise. I'm not on the web to kill time, to see all the ads, nor to drown my brain in drivel.