The use of the word "rant" in the previous post raises a topic: the decline of the rant in the age of social media.
In the print zine era rants were prized and savored. People subscribed to and anxiously awaited their xeroxed, stapled magazines in which a lone angry person railed in an honest, uncensored way you never saw in the mainstream media.
Ranting is intelligent. Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews aren't ranters, they're shouters, completely approved by the system as a faux-outlet for mass frustration.
Ranting is stimulating. Andy Rooney isn't a ranter, he's a bore, with conventional opinions rooted in some imagined, non-existent past.
The early blogosphere was a place for zine-style ranting. The late Steve Gilliard and The Rude Pundit became stars without any assistance from a paid PR firm--just search engines.
Blog comments, however, require a different skill set than mere eloquent monologuizing (monology?). One must appear to be polite, and to take others' opinions into account. In the comment world if you are too blunt or honest you are marked as a troll.
In the corporate blog-mills that have arisen post-blogosphere (since 2007 or so) comments and interconnection are more important than the posts that initiate them. Bloggers write anticipating comments and how they will respond to them. A kind of TV-like happy talk becomes the norm. ("Super!" "Loved it!")