Why?

As most of you know I am not the sort of front pager who feels a need to explain to y’all when you’re wrong on the internet. This is not to say, however, that I do not have certain… frustrations about the comment section. The Thing aside, I’d like to remind everyone that if y’all’d had your way then Olympic Hero (TM) Scottie Scheffler would have been on a highway chain gang on the outskirts of Louisville rather than in Paris, because of course the Louisville Police Department is an impeccable and inerrant source of information. Anyway, this is the kind of comment that I find not so much irritating as just befuddling:

I mean, why?

This is not an isolated example. Every time someone posts about a sport, a TV show, a movie, a book, or a musician, someone feels compelled to chip in with “I don’t care for that show. Actually I’ve never even heard of it. In fact, I don’t own a television. I live in the woods with nothing but my raccoon friends and my squirrel children. ”

I mean, why? In writing a post we create a space for the discussion of a particular topic, with the expectation that either enthusiasts of that topic or at least those marginally interested in it. If you’ve never seen House of the Dragon, never heard of Jason Isbell, and don’t care at all for the sport of baseball… why in the name of Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ would you bother to comment on those threads???!?!? If the comments were off-topic it would make a certain kind of sense, but to show up just to make clear that you don’t care about the conversation that folks are having? I’m not even upset! I’m just confused!