I kissed comment culture goodbye

I'm addicted to commenting on the internet. I was like, top 1% of comment karma on reddit something like 10 years ago, not because I was popular, but I think just out of sheer volume of comments getting 10-100 upvotes. Then to twitter, much shorter dopamine loop but a much worse comment experience because the threading is shit and it's impossible to know whose talking to who about what and there's a character limit. I was trying to break both addictions so I thought I'd try a "lower engagement" platform like Hacker News, and lo and behold, addicted here. Thank god they throttled my posting here, or I'd probably post at just as high a volume as I did back in the day on reddit.

Anyway like the author I often wonder, why tf am I commenting? I don't recognize any of you, even though I've had very pleasant interactions and have learned some interesting things here and there from you (like yesterday I learned about claude sub-agents), but it isn't what draws me. It's some kind of compulsion. Dopamine hits from replies? I do love talking to people IRL as well, so maybe it's just that? My friends tried to get me back into world of warcraft and an hour after logging in all I'd done was sat in a capital city arguing with people in Trade chat. Bizarre compulsion.

I don't understand ROI thinking but what frequently breaks my addiction is remembering that my comments are adding value to some rich bastard's wallet at probably no return to me, maybe harm. At least on reddit and twitter. HN isn't so bad, I mostly have good interactions here, but I'm an addict so what is useful to some is to me, falling off the wagon. Which is what I'm doing right now :P