I am a bit like you in that I do spend a lot of time replying to people who leave comments on my post…they took the time to read and reply so I figure it’s just polite to respond. But also it’s nice talking to people, you know? Never know when some innocuous reply you make will kick off a whole deeper conversation.

PLUS on a platform like Lemmy it also has the advantage that more comments = more visible in feeds = more replies from more people.

All that said, you do have to prioritise. Nobody’s thinking you’re rude if you just edit your post or make one comment saying “thanks for the input everyone, sorry I can’t reply to you all individually but I appreciate the advice” or whatever. We’re all busy, and most people probably don’t expect a personal reply anyway. Maybe start thinking of upvoting and making a universal reply as the baseline, and doing individual replies just as a stretch goal when you have the time spare.

If you get a lot of replies, too many to individually thank, you could update your post with an “ETA: Thanks for all of the helpful replies” or something like that.

I usually just upvote and thank the especially helpful replies, or the ones that resonate with me.in particular.

That’s why upvotes exist. If somebody helps you, upvote their comment.

You will never find a satisfying answer to this question because there isn’t one and social relationships are not transactional. Acknowledgements are nice, upvotes or comments but no one really expects replies. I generally only reply if I want to continue or add to a conversation. Nevertheless, it doesn’t frankly seem like you want advice here. If you want to study, literally just get off of Lemmy and back to studying, there isn’t a way around it.

Could try editing in how grateful you are in your original posts so you wont have to reply to each individual comment

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I don’t have much insight for you, but thank you for sharing.

An upvote is enough. If something really helps you out and you want to say “real” thanks, once per thread is enough, even if there are follow up questions.

I care a lot about what other people think (not good) and if someone tries to help or helps me, I can’t stay without saying thank you.

Since you consider this to be a bad thing, have you tried changing yourself? I recommend chillin’ and hangin’ out.

I always respond to people who comment on my posts, but I don’t post often. Generally speaking if I feel like the conversation has concluded, I’ll stop replying. If the reply to my comment doesn’t need a reply of its own (like if it’s a joke, or an addition to what I said, etc) then I also don’t reply.

Or I do. Whatever. There are no set rules for interacting with stuff. If you’re finding it hard to keep up, just don’t. For example, don’t respond to this comment. Like, for practice.

Disabling NSFW is a start

Replying to slow your gratitude seems like a nice thing to do, like holding a door open, but hardly necessary or expected. I feel like many people answering questions are just hurling their knowledge into the ether to be picked up by whoever comes across it. They know the op and perhaps more people will see it but don’t expect a response. If you don’t have the time just hit that upvote button, you’ve done nothing wrong. But if you do have the time don’t feel like you are doing something wrong by responding, it’s the unexpected things that are the most precious.

This question makes me think about how would I protect precious Mr Rogers from the heinous things in the Internet (RIP if he were still with us today) because quite honestly I would love it if there were a space like his show somewhere on it.

I recognize this, i’m a bit of a ‘thank you’er’ too. Sometimes i upvote, but particularly if someone sent me an elaborate reply, or they share something personal, or they took the effort to look something up or share a link, i will thank them. However, i don’t thank them so much from a feeling of low self worth (so, not because i don’t want to seem ungrateful), but because i want to make them happy, or feel good. It’s a bit of a shift of perspective, i think. We live in a world that can be pretty cold and harsh and i have no idea how the person that replies feels. They might be social, reply to me, move on without a second thought. But they might also be someone who generally feels depressed or worthless and in that case my sincere thanks might make their day, or at least brighten a moment in their day.

I’ve never posted asks for help that exploded, so that helps.

Simple comments that don’t really add anything to the thread I’ll upvote just cause unless they’re shitty.

I’ll reply with an emoji or or a short “thanks for the help” if anything that was offered was legitimately helpful.