No Stupid Questions

Well, sometimes, you'll get votes just for being on topic, no matter what the content of the comment is.

Thousands seems out of line for that kind of thing though.

But shit, my highest upvoted post on reddit ever was a one line quip. It was funny, but not that good. I'd make detailed, sourced mini essays and get negative votes.

Lemmy is a bit better about voting up for both topicality and effort to be sure. But we're also all human, so not everyone fact checks everything they come across before voting. They'll often vote based on "truthiness" as much as anything else. I say they, but I catch myself doing it too. I'll run across someone that put good effort in, was on topic, and at least tried to be useful, and that's worth the up vote. Could be wrong as hell, and I'd still think that. But I don't have the inclination to fact check everything. And I don't always have the stamina to respond even when I know there's something off or outright wrong, but I'm not going to down vote unless I suspect they were wrong with ill intent.

So, I think you may have run across something that, while fallacious, is not egregiously so, and/or still nestles into the community's specific bias even if they're aware it's fallacious.

Which, btw, sometimes something can have logical fallacies and not be bad. Doesn't even have to be wrong, though it's like math class where if you did the work wrong, if shouldn't matter if you got the right answer. But on a multiple choice test, you can end up acing a test by accident as long as you're making the same mistakes the right way.

I dunno, forums with voting out vote like functions are weird. As soon as you think you've figured things out, you'll run into things that make no sense again.

You really want to bake your noodle?

Make the same post twice only add one small typo the 2nd time.

Watch which one gets more up otes.

Outrage breeds engagement

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00550-7

Also stupid questions are useful in all fields of study/research.

https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/121/11/1771/30038/The-importance-of-stupidity-in-scientific-research

• Short attention span.
• Outrage farming.

Timing plays a big role.

i upvote lame comments because i find them relatable. its nice to be represented.

there's a person who always comments half correct stuff with some error in it about linux or programming and i got somehow blocked from seeing their comments, because someone probably thought i downvoted them out of a feud or something.

i imagine, if that also happened to others, that person will only ever get upvotes and agreement on their partially wrong comments.

It's a pretty common and wildly successful marketing strategy to put something on social media with one or more intentional errors to force everyone's inner Reply Guy to fight the urge to do the thing.

But it also works with unintentional errors. My less well-thought-out replies attract responses like flies. 😄

Whether it indicates the success of your thesis or not depends on how you measure it, I suppose.

Ragebait.
People are more likely to correct someone else on incorrect information or call them out on low effort content because it satisfies an innate human need for validation.
In this case validating one's own intelligence. People like to feel smart and the easiest way to achieve that feeling is to make someone else look less smart.

There is a very fine, very subjective line, between lame and funny.