I'm more motivated to participate when there's fewer comments. On Reddit I often refrained from commenting when I noticed the other commenters already covered the point I wanted to make.
Yes those are the worst. Some people think that a normal conversation should be an exchange of contradictions, even when agreeing. I know exactly 1 person like that in real life who hasn't matured beyond that, but with the size of Reddit, there'd always be one.
I also got a funny reply one time from someone who claimed to have just thought something unique, after which he literally just rewrote my exact post. Basically doing "I made this" while trying to argue about it. After all I'm glad I managed to make him understand something, but he must be an insufferable genius to be around.
Eventually there will be crazy people here too, but so far it seems a lot less pretentious than the Reddit hivemind.
Don't forget karma whoring, where your comments will be invisible to the algorithm and you seem to talk to an empty wall, while one liners and easy jokes are at the top.
Same here. Even subs (instances? communities? still figuring out the lingo, sorry) are so quiet I'm even posting actual posts. Or on news posts, I have a question about the content where on reddit someone will have already asked and I can just see what responses or vitriol they got.