You have clearly indicated the reasons that push us to engage. These are also my reasons, especially since I am, like you, an "expat" here, not a native English speaker. Even if some seek not to acknowledge that the reward is a major reason why they comment, in fact it is and I think it is not a shame.
As proof that this is the case, you can check which authors receive the most comments. Those who have special posts but who show that they care about those who comment, who respond to comments and add a reward. This reward is normal if we take into account the time spent, the interest shown for the respective post and the contribution of each one to the development of the approached topic.
Nothing is sadder than a post that even if it is well written and well paid, has no comment.
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totally agree!
truth be told, another factor that plays a huge role in this is visibility. For example, a new user writes a pretty damn good post but at the same time the only way to be seen if he got no upvotes is by someone who manually curates on the "recent" tab.
To add to that even if he got just a little LP/HP or whatever just a few will comment basically because they know they won't get rewards. The actual people that are 100% genuine regarding upvoting/commenting are just a few.
After almost 4 years in these platforms, i can tell with 100% certainty now, which users actually read the post and which user made a comment only for the rewards!
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Yes, it is easy to recognize a comment whose author didn;t read the post.
The opposite happens to me, I often read the post but do not comment if I have nothing to say, or I did not understand what is being said in that post.
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