they're immune to your consultations

[freckles_and_doubt]

So, you lot are odd. More specifically, I lament my complete and utter inability to map your responses, i.e. to predict which of my posts will garner millyuns of comments, and which will languish with no more adornment than a grammar nit-pick and an unrelated link. On the whole I'm in this blogging lark for the dialogue and wish to provoke same, tending to feel confused and unfulfilled if I don't succeed. This is provoking introspection. (Possibly exacerbated by an uneasy night after an emergency visit to my dad, who seems to have picked up a 'flu bug which is not interacting at all well with his motor neurone symptoms).

I am interested to notice that, while posts tagged, for example, "narcissism" on the whole attract a reasonable number of comments despite my expectation exactly to the contrary, posts in which I offer a detailed review of a film or book generally don't pick up on the comment action. In fact, most of them are not commented on at all. I am fascinated by this, and somewhat at a loss to account for it. Inevitably, pollage results.

[Poll #1442936]
Or, as always, leave some other pithy rejoinder in the comments. (See what I did there? self-conscious self-fulfilling recursive reference ftw!)

Comments

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

"Clicky" options in polls are so 2008! ;>

Good lord, please don't feel obliged to post comments just because I'm coming across all insecure - I'm basically interested in motivations rather than being on the hunt for more comments. I mean, if I conduct six months of research and discover the exact formulae for the post which will elicit the most comments, I'd probably continue posting exactly the same kinds of posts that I currently do, because I enjoy posting them. (Although I'd franchise the formula for untold cash, I have to say). I'm just naturally a pattern-seeking organism and want to understand the graceful sine waves of Internet interest.

Also, lack of recent contact so not an issue. Several commenters on this blog I've never actually met in the flesh, so you're well ahead!

Your response to my reviews is curiously similar to my mother's, in that she vows she enjoys watching almost any sort of movie with me because of the way I unwrap it afterwards. Then again, she presumably has more investment than you do in the value of my expensive education ;>.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Reviews, yours especially, add a lot to a movie. Afterwards.

[stringgeek.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear heavens. Don't think I'm going to manufacture comments out of nothing just to make you feel better! I'm just going to submit the ones I've been thinking and NOT writing. In other words, I'm done being bashful. Believe me, I almost always have something to say--I've just been hesitant to say it. Well, the gloves are off now, baby! :-P

"so 2008". I love it!

"graceful sine waves of the internet"? Don't you mean scribbles of teh rabid monkeys who inhabit teh intarwebs? I'm sure they look extremely similar when plotted on a line graph. :-P

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I was going to be all surprised to think that you're bashful about posting comments, but in fact I realise that I'm exactly the same about other people's blogs if I don't know them well (I think about half of my potential comments on grumpyolddog's posts get self-edited into nothingness). I'm less inhibited about yours, though. It helps to actually know you. And I'm sure it's not as long as 8349702 years - 7569368 at the very most!