IMO up and down votes on any social platform are pointless -- no pun intended -- at best and wildly misleading at worst. The value they are supposed to provide -- namely to make 'better' comments more visible while sending the 'bad' comments to oblivion -- quickly becomes over ridden by glory hogging and agenda pushing. I rarely upvote any more, and only downvote when the comment is seriously off point or a clear attempt to derail the discussion and even here it's mostly out of spite rather than because I feel I'm providing some useful contribution. I feel that if you want to see quality content then you need to put in the time wading through the junk; there is no short cut. OP's sentiment "Why bother?" is bang on, but sadly so is "Don't bother". On that note some -- ie. very few -- comments are interesting or funny and I can get a lot out of reading them, so for me at least it's worth my time to scroll through. But it's a crap shoot and mostly a huge waste of time, not to mention always take anything you read with a very large grain of salt. My grandpa used to tell great stories but even as a small child I understood that the real value was in his qualities as a story teller rather than in what had actually happened.