The eye opening moment is when one of these threads touches on a subject you know a lot about and the top upvoted comment is spouting complete bullshit. See it once and you start to doubt the credibility of every other highly upvoted comment that looks legit but could be just as wrong, you simply don't know enough to immediately disprove it.

[–] actually@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I have a conspiracy theory that most users who are an expert don’t post much about that.

For example I am an expert on two things most people find obscure; and for all my comments I just avoid talking about them. It’s too hard to wrap up an idea without lots of background information, there are no short posts or comments I can make about it.

Almost all the highly upvoted stuff are short. Were I to try to make an expert post it would be totally ignored. So why bother for me when I can snarky about things I know nothing about ? More fun !

I think experts who write short terse pithy comments that hit the mark, at a timely fashion, are rarer than hens teeth

[–] Anon518@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Exactly.