I've got a theory...

[rich_jacko]

...it could be bunnies that the triviality of an LJ post is roughly proportional to the number of comments it will get.

So when I post about the last couple of minutes of a TV programme, I get 35 comments (and counting). This post is about something rather more important, so I suspect it will get far fewer comments ;o)

Whatever else you may think about the Tories' policies; or whether forcing a by-election is meaningless, money-wasting grandstanding or not; David Davis's speech yesterday was a rather magnificent condemnation of this government's relentless attack on our civil liberties.

I'd be interested to know what my normally anti-Tory, pro-civil liberties friends made of it.

- Video link
- Full transcript

Comments

[grok-mctanys.livejournal.com]

I think your theory is correct, and has a pretty simple explanation.

It's easy to write a trivial and/or funny reply to a trivial post. A trivial post invites trivial replies; they are expected as they are the same spirit as the original post. Consequently, lots of people will thrash one out in under a minute without much trouble or need for thought.

It's possible to write a trivial reply to a serious post, but a serious post does not implicitly invite trivial replies. It invites serious replies. So you will get fewer trivial replies to serious posts than to trivial posts.

A serious post invites serious replies. Serious replies require thought, consideration and editing. Many times I've seen a serious post and:

a) thought "That's pretty much what I think. I don't really have anything to add here apart from a 'me too' which seems a bit pointless"

b) thought "I ought to respond to that, but I'm busy now so I'll do it later" and then completely forgotten about it.

c) started writing a reply, gone off to google or wikipedia to look something up, followed one link not related to the reply at hand, got competely absorbed in this other subject and not quite returned to writing the reply.

d) started writing a reply, gone off to google or wikipedia to look something up, found out more about the subject, realised what I was in the middle of writing was a bunch of crap, deleted it, and then couldn't get around to start writing a new reply from scratch with this new-found information.

e) Written a reply, started proof-reading it and realised that it was badly written. Paragraphs could be put in a much better order. I've made the same point made too many times without any sort of coherency. etc... Then I start editing the thing and make it worse. Re-ordered paragraphs refer to things I've now not mentioned yet. Half-rewritten sentences has inconsistent tense/case, or just stop in the. The reply is now worse than it was before, I realise I can't post it the way it is, but fixing it is suddenly too difficult so I don't bother and just kill the browser window.


Consequently, I don't write as many serious replies as I write trivial replies. I think other people will do some of the above themselves, and possibly find their own other ways to not post serious replies.

[pharrap.livejournal.com]

You obviously forgot to do (e) this time.

(this is a trivial reply to a serious comment)

[rich-jacko.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on posting a serious reply to a trivial comment in a serious post! :o)