People who don't ++ OPs, nor comments or add anything of value on social media / thread.

Please.
What is your purpose but self projection?

This is a nice trick to farm ++.

Inb4:
The meme posters might make use of this.

But you're right. Since we can't read emotions via text (not everytime), a simple like can be a great indicator imho.

I'm inviting to discuss this topic because I'm interested in this and want to learn more about it.

I have a question thought. How do you know these hypothetical people without purpose exist?

if they don't like, post, comment... if they don't have any impact at all on the social media of your choice, then how do you know they exist?

@Hazarth 🌈magic🌈

@Hazarth indeed, where is evidence?
I can estimate how many people miss a like button on my YT videos, ok, because there is a watch counter. And I get sad, when video doesn't get at the very least 10% of views liking.

@vintprox the hard Truth is closing the tab or alt tabbing is much easier than liking a video

It takes a good level of Humanity and Patience to take a pause and appreciate the Video Content or its Author

@Hazarth I think the key there is "comment anything of value." I've seen my fair share of people on social media, this site included, who comment plenty - but all of it is just mindless drivel, usually with a twist of "I'm right and you're wrong."

Something about a subject I'm not interested in? no upvote.
Something technical about a technology I don't know nor am I interested in learning? no upvote.
Boring joke? no upvote.
Bad take? no upvote.
Meme that should belong in 9gag? no upvote and sometimes downvote if it's particularly bad.
Whining about upvotes? no upvote.

Your take is particularly bad enough to make me want to reply to it? congratulations, downvote.

Also it should be noted that I don't pay attention to every comment. So of course I'm not gonna upvote/downvote what I didn't read.

@vintprox I’d like to like YouTube videos but I’m not allowed to unless I’m logged in.

@AlmondSauce Ah, that's fair. I didn't read it like that but it makes a lot more sense this way.

in that case

@scor

yes, I think some people just have to say something so they feel included, especially when they don't have anything to say. I assume this happens for people that didn't find their identity yet, so they don't have real expertise or passion about anything, but they really want to be part of *something*. So they put out a lot of valueless content in hopes they will stumble upon something that will define them eventually. Most people get this phase over with in their teens, some don't.

On that note I would only blame the adults that are still like this. From younger folk it's somewhat expected that they have a lot to say, but not a lot of value to add. An adult should know better

@Hazarth & @-ANGRY-STUDENT- & @vintprox & @AlmondSauce
A)
I particularly am talking about ++, the ones on devrant.
BA)
These hypothetical people are obvious commenters on posts where they even approve the mentioned argument in a post but wouldn't read other comments than OPs clickbait && successively post the exact same opinion as other commenters expressed sometimes just a few post before theirs but often after a significant time has passed to the referred comment.
BB)
And if, say, 10 people act on a thread, circle jerking to a random topic, but not even OP has 09 upvotes and every following comment only 'wins' a meagre 01-02 ++s.. Then it's obvious that the majority of the thread does not contribute to others comments.
C)
It's utterly painful much effort to downvote either OP or any comments. So over the grand majority of posts I assume people do not find the time to downvote thus vote by feet. As it is becoming the norm these decades.
So there is no 'eradication' of 'given' ++.

@scor

for A and B(AB) yeah, I originally misunderstood your question, but AlmondSauce explained it to me, so I'm on track now

for C

To be fair, I also don't downvote nor dislike anything on any platform unless it's spam, scam, gibberish or similar. If I disagree with something I either engage in discourse or skip it entirely. It's not that I don't have time to downvote something, it's that downvoting something to me seems petty, especially since other people might like it and a lot of social media use it as a discriminatory factor. I don't want to hide opinions I disagree with on the internet, I want them to be visible and discussed, and most social media would start hiding posts and videos with a lot of dislikes. So I personally find it contra-productive and just use it as a janitorial tool rather than an opinion tool

@Hazarth

To your C)

Which is absolutely fine.
We are all free to have different levels of acceptance.

People only and I mean only commenting gibberish and self projection though, is quite a sad by-product of our times.

Ok. There always have been posers.
To me it's just with modern and ever more transparent structures, people are not just ridiculing themselves but harming the society and knowledge systems they act in.

@scor
It seems to be going deep down the rabbit hole from here on.
Philosophy is quite some work. Init?

@AlmondSauce HOW do you know us SO well?

@Lensflare
Need a site that let's you keep track of things like that across sites that normally require a log in.

Likes, links of interest, etc. I guess that's what SSO is for, but why shouldnt we be able to vote and comment on *everything*?

I think this was the idea behind dissenter but the only people who use it are political shitposters.

@scor what do you think caused this? Do you think It's objectively worse than it used to be or perhaps It's just more visible?

To me it seems at least par of the problem is the move from rewarding merit to rewarding tokenization. So acting like you're always on the right side is more important than actually understanding the topics. Hmm