A decade ago I would have agreed with you.  In blogging&#x27;s heyday in general I found online articles to be of much higher value than the comments, especially as Slashdot descended into pure meme-dom.<p>But these days there is a confluence of factors that have driven average web content quality through the floor.  Whether it&#x27;s the highly tuned click-bait industry, the easy accessibility of turnkey viral content platforms like Medium encouraging banal populist &quot;think&quot; pieces, or just the mainstreaming of tech startups as an average career path, whatever it is the average article I see these days is worth far less than the attention it expects.<p>I&#x27;m not sure whether HN comments are the best use of my time either, but middlebrow dismissals not withstanding, at least they aren&#x27;t a race to the bottom.