I have a lot of these feelings as well. Even though I fight against having them, against feeling like it is using precious time. As you note, time is the most scarce commodity that we will never get back. The balance between creating content, consuming content, and then interpreting (digesting) it to make thoughtful comments to engage and be sincere about this engagement is a strange balance every one on here seems to disagree about. Making a comment for comments sake (commenting just to make it seem that you are engaging) is probably one of the most insincere. It does not drive any engagement, thought, and it seems like they merely scrolled through your work to the comment box to write something. This might not always be the case, but as a content creator writing deep thoughts, it feels like that when comments read merely as “good” or “nice”. I try to appreciate them, but as you say, we wonder if this is really sincere engagement? I am not sure about these thoughts.

Sorry for the wall of text! Your post really made the think a bit, especially because commenting and engagement are such important factors that can sometimes take even more time than posting, if done with the intentions of propelling engagement forward and really digesting others’ work.