Maybe those are the only comments the person can afford to give anyway. You don't have to take it personal that someone out there didn't reciprocate the same level of value you give or more. It's just their preference to give you that amount due at that period for your time.
To expect people to give meaningful comments and be engaging is a recipe for disappointment. Rather, I think it's better to appreciate that even when they failed to meet your expectations, some acts of reciprocating attention were made than ignore you completely.
It's not all the time that people have something valuable to say to add to the conversation so an emoji fist bump is a neutral way of saying agreement and acknowledgement without admitting I got nothing to add to the discussion.
I totally agree.
Sometimes just few words are the right amount.
But when we are talking about build an audience and engage, it's good to try create that discussion on your post and attack more people for that discussion.
Otherwise you are missing people that tried to engage and you didn't follow the flow.
I think part of the reason is having an cross cultural insight to how the other person perceives flow. I mean, we can come from different cultures and each culture has their own manner of communicating disagreement from subtle to overt ways and it's expounded by the change in vocabulary. And sometimes people just don't want to put more energy on areas they can already agree or disagree on.
To be fully invested in a discussion and expecting the other to reciprocate that attention given online is just common courtesy but it happening online also means it may be asking too much. From both sides of the coin I can weigh in and excuse people for bailing out on the discussion no matter how invested I am into it, just cause they probably don't have the time to spare to dwell on it and that's perfectly natural.
Building and engaging is like a joke, it can be hit or miss and ones best bet is appealing to the general areas where mutual agreement can be reached rather than find resolution to a conflict that they may not be invested in the discussion at hand.