Comment by scared_together

> Is it just that the subject line alone is a springboard for casual discussion?

I think this has been the case on many sites, for decades. Many people just want to read and write comments without engaging with the OP.

Have a look at this Reddit thread [0] about this Ars Technica article [1] - both are 15 years old.

I suppose in the 2010s this was an amusing detail of online discussion. In the 2020s it makes me feel a little uneasy - it suggests that the entire concept of people jumping from site to site, clicking links and understanding what they are writing about was flawed from the start. No wonder the internet became centralized and slopified.

And no, I didn’t read the OP, I found your comment to be more interesting to discuss. These days with AI articles flooding the internet it seems foolish to actually read articles before the comments.

Edit: although we have to contend with AI generated comments as well. I wonder how many of the comments on this page actually have original insights into the politico economics of AI.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gz9k7/the_internet_is_...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot...