The Empirical Manifesto

That's one way to grow your readership. Try newfriends.

I have grown quite used to you not missing the point because I wasn't around to argue with.

I will grant you that yes, I assumed growing your readership was your goal, else why would you care to bring new people into your journal through random commenting. But where this idea of a measuring stick gets tacked on, I'm clueless. I was simply suggesting a tool for meeting new people that wanted to be met.

I just finished watching The Reader. Perhaps I too like the main character should keep my mouth shut, even if I will loose nothing and the other person involved will benefit. Though it creates all kinds of emotional problems, there is a simplicity or letting what will be be, much like removing warning labels and tort lawyers.

*sigh*

Here we go again. Now you've directly taken my words out of context. The question was, "What other purpose could randomly commenting have other than to draw attention to yourself?" In this case, "yourself" is defined as your Live Journal presence, which means your Live Journal blog. Therefore, random commenting raises awareness of your blog. Since blogging (at least on Live Journal) is predominately written text which is meant to be consumed (translated: read) by others, how does random commenting not create new readers?

And for clarification before you have a chance to take these questions out of context, I'm suggesting that there is a single, definite conversion rate between random commenting and subscribers/readers, i.e. random commenting does not generate a fixed quantity of conversion. But it is advertising.

I suppose, though, if you're going to stick to your argument of "it's fun" you mean it's fun to barge into people's journals uninvited, much like a troublemaker or, as it has become to be labeled on the internet, trolling.

Have I trolled before? Yes, usually on Paige's Xanga and Dan's blog. On Paige's journal, the topic is always politics. I engage her commenters to examine their viewpoints from various angles, mostly through mocking and playing Devil's advocate. The same is true of Dan's site, though his questions usually tend to be more blasé.

Very non sequitur. Very ehowton.

I hope you're not being an ass!!!

I do my version of that here.
http://fuzzysquid.com/LJ.php

The Russians seem to have a preoccupation with the Nazi's and raccoons.

I had a lot of fun with people posting Michael Jackson pics. What a hero they would say. He should get the Congressional Medal of Honor they would say. Yes, all pedophiles should get medals I would say, all lined up against walls at a high velocity.