Whither Comments?

Okay, I'm not a "comment whore" or anything (really -- I'm not!) but I do admit I do feel a slight flash of jealousy when I browse some other blogs and find that the number of comments they receive is consistently really high, especially compared to mine. (To wit: I've only hit double-digit comments once on this blog.)

But then I stopped to think what purpose comments really serve, and whether this little flash of jealousy I get makes any sense.

Let's face it, on some small level, comments can somehow serve as a barometer of popularity -- the more comments you get, the more concrete proof you have that you have a readership, and there are people out there who actually read what you say and actually think about it. Comments do something that site traffic statistics can't do: they tell you what some of your readers actually think. For example, I get a lot of hits from BlogExplosion, apparently, but none of those hits usually stay on for more than the requisite 30-second surf. It's the comments that tell you someone's paying actual attention.

But then when I started thinking in more detail about the comments left on some other peoples' blogs, I realize I have no real cause to be "jealous," per se. (This is how pathetic my life is: I spend my free time thinking about the social implications of blog comments.)

I like sites where the comments appear to be a somewhat interactive experience between the blogger and the readership. On some of the blogs to the right, it's evident (I think) that many commenters have never met the blogger in person, and the comment section is really a "get-to-know-you" through the usually not-highly-personal world of the internets.

Other blogs, however, appear to be a victim of their own success. Very highly trafficked blogs -- the ones which generate upwards of 40 to 60 comments on each new post -- don't have that give and take. While I still enjoy the material on those blogs -- whether because of a particularly evocative writing style or due to fascinating substance -- the comments sections bore me to the point that I have come to stop reading them. If there are 50 comments on a post, and all of them say "You are such a great writer!"... well, that's boring. Similarly, blog entries that really are nothing more than a picture of the blogger, with all the comments running along the sycophant lines of "Wow, you are so hot/gorgeous/handsome/pretty/studly/doable!" While I'm sure that's a great ego boost, that's not something I generally feel the need to be envious about. (Not that those words would properly describe any photo of myself I could choose to put up.)

I tend to only take the time to post a comment when I really have something to say. If I can't say anything too different from comments already posted, or if I can't contribute intelligently to an ongoing discussion, I'd rather not comment at all. I don't usually contribute to long chains of "You're so great!" -- I presume by the time I get there, the blogger knows it from his other comments. Another blog I check frequently is usually loaded with comments from regular readers, most of whom know the blogger personally, and whose comments are generally inane. (Why would you leave "Get well!" or "Good luck!" in the comments section when you know the blogger's phone number?) In which case "comment envy" looks rather silly.

Which leads to my last random thought: there's one blog I check -- again, a nameless one -- in which one commenter shows up often, but not so much to comment on the blogger's posts, but to send "private" communications to the blogger: "Call me this weekend!" or "I had fun last weekend. We should hang out again!" This only leads me to wonder why the commenter can't just pick up a frigging telephone. I know that if my friends knew about this blog and came on here just to post messages to me, my first reaction would be "Uh... you couldn't call me on my cell phone?"