I saw comments on a blog

Context
The library I work at has a new book by Kate Gosselin. I got to looking around on the Web for more information about her and came to the TLC website, which has a blog written by Kate herself. The posting I looked at had 235 comments on it.

Commentary
My husband thinks I'm addicted to tabloids. I say that can't possibly be true, since I've never paid money for one of them since they lied about Carol Burnett. But the truth is, I do read them in the supermarket checkout line or in the staff lounge and that's the only reason I know anything about Kate Gosselin at all, since I'm not a fan of reality TV.

As you might imagine, the tabloids give me a kind of skewed summary of the Gosselins' life; for example, I didn't know until today that their eight children consisted of one set of twins and one set of sextuplets. So it was interesting to me to read what the lady had to say about her own life in her blog. Mostly she sounded shallow and saccharine, writing in the mommy-blogger style, nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

Then I saw the comments. Most of them had nothing to do with the topic Mrs. Gosselin was writing about, but instead offered her sympathy and support regarding her recent divorce. This seemed kind of odd to me on two levels: why would the commenters care so much for a woman that they, frankly, only know from television and why would the support of anonymous strangers (nobody uses their real name when they comment on a blog, right? ;-)) be of any value to a woman going through a painful personal transition?

The negative responses were even more incomprehensible. Again, why would she care about the disapproval of people she's never met, but even more, why on earth do they disapprove so much? Kate Gosselin may be vapid, vain, and moneygrubbing. She may even be a bad wife and/or mother, but she's not your wife or mother! Why effect could she possibly have on your life that would inspire you to spend time carefully crafting a hatchet job? Of course, I'm never going to get back the time I spent writing this blog post either, so maybe I'm just feeding the beast.

What did you see today?