The Crux of reading Comments

I caught myself quite often when reading news scrolling down to the comment section and reading some of them and recently I wondered why I do that. I think it‘s two things, on one hand, I‘d like my opinion on the article to be reaffirmed by other people (even though I don‘t know them) and that makes me feel good and intelligent!? And on the other hand, it‘s like watching a car crash and being amazed at what other people are writing.

But I realized that I had to stop doing that because I don‘t think there‘s anything worthwhile taking away from it, all it does is eat away from my precious time and make me angry. And it‘s not like I‘m contributing to the discussion and writing my own comment either.

These days most comment sections are this endless scroll that keeps you hooked in for minutes on stupid discussions between strangers when in fact you could move on to the next news article. I‘m actually feeling a lot less angry since I started doing that but it still happens sometimes that when reading something I wonder what other people are saying about it and start reading some of the comments. But not that often anymore.