Thanks for listening. No pressure to comment.

I've noticed a trend lately in blogging, most notably over at Indie Bloggers: posts without comments - including several of mine - abound. Now, to me, an entry without comments smacks of the 7th-grade party to which no one shows. Even the nerdy neighbor kid who has pursued you since elementary school doesn't come. And as the birthday girl you've put on your finest outfit and invited both the cool and not-so-cool kids and broke out your Casio keyboard. So after you change into your pajamas and curl up on the couch you're left with nothing to do but drink sherbert punch with your mom and watch Falcon Crest. It doesn't say anything about you or your coolness, bday girl, but you might feel like it does.

The thought of this makes me ache. Just as a full roster of partyers showing to your event makes you feel great, blog comments feel good. They are fun. They are validating.

I know that many already argue that we aren't writing for other people, so comments are really just gravy, but I don't buy it; bloggers, by our very nature, are putting thoughts out there for public consumption. If we weren't writing for others, we could just as easily type up our drama and rants and neverending cat stories in Wordpad and let them sit in an unlabeled folder on our desktops. Or we could turn off comments, which very few bloggers actually do, and the thought of which makes me break into a cold sweat.

So I submit that most bloggers write, at least partially, for the interaction with our readers. We like to get feedback and hear what others think about our experiences, our writing, our thoughts and my our neuroses. And since it's fair to say that most of our readers are also bloggers, why is it that so many of us - myself included - don't comment when we visit a site?

I have a variety of award-winning excuses I've crafted over time, just as I do for not holding a co-worker's baby when it's held out like a prize in front of me. Eh, I just don't have time right now what with Pat Sajak and Vanna coming on - I'll come back and write something later. If I admire the blogger's humor, it's likely that I feel I have nothing sufficiently witty to say. If the subject matter is serious, writer's block sometimes sets in, rendering me with nothing remotely meaningful to add to the conversation. Occasionally I won't really understand a post, like an entry on supply and demand (which shall never make an ounce of sense to me) or education policy in Transnistria (which frankly I didn't know existed before I Googled it). More often than that I won't relate to the content, such as those on testicular self exams or the beauty of child and/or lizard rearing.

But I often leave feeling like I owe the blogger something anyway. That because he or she made the effort to lay these thoughts bare to the world, my showing up and not writing something is somehow rude. I'd never show at a party, eat a plate of Swedish meatballs and down a cocktail or three, and leave without at least greeting the hostess, would I?

Then again, most hosts I know don't invite the entire Internet over for their Tupperware parties.