It’s already been mentioned that some people are putting on a show for an audience. There’s more to the social media metagame too. Many are simply trolls. Social media has gone a lot deeper than basic forum posting days.

Some commenters are setting up their own victory or confirmation bias. They post something incendiary which is an invitation for polar opposite replies so they can dump their prepared responses, which always sounds better than anyone who replies with a comment written off the cuff.

Sometimes they’re reposting a common variant of an (un)popular remark that more people than not will upvote/downvote or reply in agreeance/disagreeance with, thus proving a point to themselves (an audiences).

Of course there’s the ones who are flooding the zone with shit so they can shift the Overton Window.

I don’t know about you guys but the more I think about it the more social media seems like an actual asylum. There’s not an exchange of ideas like back in the older days of the internet. It’s more like the mentally unstable unhoused people who roam around cities arguing with themselves. Social media puts them all in a single room and let’s chaos ensue. All while the tech industry sells ads and subscriptions to view the pandemonium.