I kissed comment culture goodbye

I find typing the comment out, then deleting it and not submitting kinda gives my brain the 90% feeling of needing to say something. Only place I don't have to do this is 4chan, where the worst thing to happen is that your comment gets ignored or something mean is said to me (oh dear!)

I unironically just closed this tab before submitting out of habit and reopened it to submit this

I've found increasingly I'll submit a comment only to go back 30 seconds later and delete it.

I mostly do that when I go "that was a little bit mean of me... do I really need to be mean, what's the point?"

Fortunately, that seems to also have trained me to not write those comments in the first place. I also think much more about what I am trying to actually effect with a comment, not just about what feels good in the particular moment.

One thing that didn't change though is that probably most of my comments are edited at least once, often a few times, right after sending them. And even if it's just swapping out a word, or adding a missing comma. This one here is no exception at all, I just added this paragraph after doing some minor edits.

I probably do that 2-3 times a day. Usually after writing the comment and proofreading it, I'll think about whether it's something I really want to put out there, and sometimes I'll pass.

Speaking of 4chan, I actually found an IRL friend there through commenting on /g/. We both wanted to try the TOX messenger and its various spin-offs. Then we took it to Steam and now years later we know each other by face and name. We even have various different political views but never argued.

It may be a super low sample size but it's far from impossible. Especially Reddit has DMs/chat and it's way easier since you can contact someone without someone else impersonating the other party. Sometimes you gotta believe you are talking to just another human being. Love that the article in the OP mentions trolling. We all probably had moments where we did not act in the best way we could have.

To all those that act noble in the shroud of anonymity!

Update: The article also says it takes several hundreds of hours. That may be so, but I find the same time needs to be spent IRL to get to know someone. Usually a continuous effort can be just as much as linking a friend a good story and saying hi. People will engage conversation spontaneously when both parties want.

I participate in a number of 'old school' forums, never anything like reddit or discord. On those forums, while I have posted on some a fair amount, I actually find that most of the time I spend 15 minutes writing up a post, then delete it. There are a number of reasons I don't hit the submit button. Sometimes its because I see that a lot of other posters will disagree with it, and I don't think they will argue rationally and in good faith; but the most valuable posts I don't submit are when I get to a point in my argument when I realize that I'm wrong or that my opinion or point of view is badly supported or any numer of other things that force me to re-evaluate position. I've probably held that position for a while thinking I'm right, but actually formulating the argument forces me to confront my biases or mistakes.

I stumbled across the same pattern by accident after too many years of arguing with others online. These days my commentary is limited to here, and a handful of specialized hobbyist forums where there is still pleasant and informative discussions to be had. The "cozy web". (At least until the LLM spam takes it over, too.)

I’m more in the lurker camp. But sometimes I write a comment or want to reply to something. Every now and then I type a super long comment to simply leave the page before posting. Sometimes it’s the fear of not being clear enough and dreading the reply’s and or downvotes. Or the reason that I don’t want to steer things up with my believes. Don’t know. I have this problem that I generally find social interactions tiresome. Some topics are easy. But I don’t have the energy to start a debate over the internet about some random topic. So I refrain from posting with the feeling that inside I said my piece and move on.

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Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I've been doing that a ton on HN lately.

Sounds like forums are your rubber ducky debugger of life.