There's even a study that confirms many online commenters are more interested in brandishing their opinions in the comments section than in reading the articles themselves.
More than half of the people who leave comments on news stories spend as much or more time on the comments as on the actual story, according to the paper from the Engaging News Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
Almost 20% of people report spending more time on the comment section than on the story.
At their best, comment sections are thriving examples of civil discourse. At their worst, they are troll-infested pits of cruelty, bigotry, and ignorance, where personal attacks and slurs count as dialogue.
Perhaps because of this tone, the aforementioned study found that most internet users avoid news site comments and neither read nor post on them. One in three (35%) will look at comments but never chime in. Just 14% of internet users who have ever commented anywhere—Facebook, a product review site, or otherwise—have done so on a news site.
Those of us who comment at least once a week are more likely to be men (64%) and to have a high school education or less (53%) than those who only allow themselves an occasional peek at the discussion.
For many of these enthusiastic commenters, the comment section may be the whole point of their visit.
"You would think people spend the lion's share of their time on the article, and the comments are an afterthought," said Talia Stroud, the study's lead author and an associate professor of communications at Austin.
But no. Commenters may in fact barely digest the facts of a story before jumping in with an opinion, Stroud added. Some may get no farther than the headline before opining, particularly on an organization's Facebook page. For many commenters, the article is beside the point. For these users, a news site is just a "meeting point."
