It started out harmlessly, a comment on hacker news roughly 16 years ago.
From there it expanded to reddit, substack, twitter. And it increased in frequency, from every few months to every week, peaking at several times a day. It became an addictive, productive habit—I would scan the headlines for a catchy title, quickly skim the piece, and then race to the comment section and type one out.
Sometimes the comments were insightful or funny. At other times, curt or nitpicky. It was an exercise of logic, of ideation, of debate. It was a mix of disdain, delight and discourse. But mostly it was just a fun time.
Being an active commenter felt like being an internet socialite, part of an elite society of people who put their voice out there instead of lurked. And my fellow internet socialites responded in turn. Some upvoted, responded, debated. Some liked what I said, some hated it. A few of my comments made it to the top and became a fountain of dopamine. A few comments made it to the very bottom too.
That can happen with 16 years of commenting history.
I’ve benefited incredibly from commenting. It has sharpened both my writing and logic. It has developed my voice. It has trained me in debate. It has unleashed personas that I would otherwise never become—teacher, supporter, economist, historian, debater, and of course, troll.
It has made me a (mostly) better person. But I cannot shake the conviction that I need to leave commenting for good.
Why? Well, I’ve been reflecting on what I want out of the internet (as part of a larger reflection of what I want out of life). I’ve always enjoyed the internet as the frontier of “new”—its where I find novel ideas, content, thoughts, personalities, achievements and craft. But with the rise of doom scrolling, media echo chambers, AI, and my age, “new” is no longer that exciting. I find myself less satisfied browsing the internet, hoping the next thing I consume to be actually high quality, and I’m realizing that I’d rather just spend my time with a good set of quality friends.
Unfortunately, this is where comment culture comes in. 16 years of commenting has made me zero friends.
That scares me. All of that social activity with zero ROI. At first, I thought that I needed to change my commenting habits, and, you know, try to make connections. But the more I considered how to make friends in comment culture, the more I realized that it wasn’t just my own social ineptitude. Comment culture has a problem. Systemically, it produces an internet of strangers.
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