Having just finished up with undergraduate studies, I can really relate to this from the experience of the quality of feedback from my peers both inside and outside the classroom as well as from watching the political debate. It seemed to me then as it seems to me now that there are sometimes external factors such as requirements or internal factors such as just unrelated emotional needs that drive some of these more simple comments that really don’t provide much to the conversation except gratification of the individual.
However, I don’t know much about that and would be very interested in the psychological aspects of why people do tend to make what seems to be not-that-useful comments?
Further, in the discussion here we seem to have a group suggesting that the first thing individual should do is try to interact with those providing unhelpful criticism to get them to expand. I think this may be useful in places where interaction is necessary like the political arena, but is it really the responsibility of the author to draw out the immature critic’s opinions in a private setting?