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Who cares?
The most important part of each issue of People is, of course, the letters section. Readers express indignation or delight at their favorite celebrities' happenings. These letters are curated by editors to yield the most passionate opinions, though. Online, the websites of People and other tabloids yield a far less invested set of readers.

This has given rise to a double phenomenon on gossip-magazines' sites – commenters on every article saying they don't care about it, and commenters asking why people go to gossip sites if they're not interested.

Kim

For instance, this weekend, user "Jessie Johnson" replied to an ennui-filled thread about Kim Kardashian's birthday: "If you people do not like Kim and what she does why do you bother reading the story then? and better yet why do you take the time to comment?"

Jessie, writing under her real name through People's Facebook integration, has a vested interest. She's a Kim Kardashian fan: "On the other hand I think Kim if beautiful and I hope she has many many more birthdays in her future!" For a reader like Jessie, a reader asking why someone should care about Kim Kardashian is even more upsetting than a comment that criticizes Kardashian along the lines of her appearance, or virtue, or whatever.

Michael Bloomberg's Shoe Closet

The type of commenter who criticizes a person can be argued against – or at least told that their attacks are nasty. The kind who just doesn't care (especially common among posts about reality TV stars like Kardashian) may actually have a point – Kardashian, or any tabloid subject, doesn't have much value to our society. Even People's readers know that – the construction "why do you bother reading the story?" indicates that the reader has already made peace with the story's meaninglessness. They're reading just for fun, and they don't want that fun ruined.

Kardashian graph

But even readers who don't care about stars are trying to bring some sense to the anti-everything commenter culture. "MLR," a commenter on a story about Michael Bloomberg's shoe closet, wrote: "All these people that are appalled that they would print a story about shoes on people.com amaze me...why are you reading in the first place?"
Bloomberg graph

The comments on the Bloomberg article had been disdainful, and even "MLR" seems underwhelmed by the story – but he or she recognizes that boredom is part of the bargain when you read the website of a magazine meant for doctors' waiting rooms.

The formula changes slightly from site-to-site – Star, a magazine less reliable than the publicist-friendly People, has its own "Why are you reading this?" set, but they defame the magazine, not their fellow readers. In response to readers critical of a Teen Mom star, "nr" wrote, "you don't even know if thi sh!t is true .. probably tomorrow pp'll say she is in drugs or getting botox." "Kelly" wrote, "Star is famous for making up stories to sell magazines."
What do you expect?

Why are you bothering to read this, the thinking goes, if you're going to take it seriously? It's fun to laugh at or find fault with Star's reporting, but thinking seriously about it ruins the fun.

Life and Style and In Touch's sites haven't enabled comments, and Us Weekly's comments are either spam or cruel commentary. But People's comments, unlike Star's, remains reverential of the form. In response to a reader who didn't care about Jennifer Garner's Halloween plans, Jessica Chillcott wrote, "bob this is a celebrity magazine....what do you expect......if you don't like it don't read it." "Bob," accustomed to the bursts of energy that wall-to-wall web coverage of major events can provide, expects every day on the internet gossip-sphere to be exciting. But there are days when the big news is that Jennifer Garner is taking her children trick-or-treating and that Michael Bloomberg has only six pairs of loafers.

Teen MomReaders who haven't metabolized this quickly-refreshing but never-quite-exciting world of web gossip will invariably be disappointed – and those sustained by little bits of gossip, however inconsequential, will always be there to ask why they're even commenting.

At People, they'll be trying to reconcile the magazine's sweet, celebrity-friendly tone with the garrulousness of web culture, because they care a lot about People. At Star, they'll be reminding readers not to take anything on the site too seriously, as the question of why boring or unreliable articles are placed on the site is meaningless. These commenters don't care about Star at all. And why should they, when the rest of the readership is so critical?