I'm curious do a lot of people feel they need to restrain themselves from writing insults on the internet? My personality doesn't change between online or offline mode, I only adapt to the company I'm with with. If anything I'm more likely to get annoyed offline by the lack of Google and the inability to verify other peoples assertions.

The problem as so many people have pointed out and I agree with is that funny comments at the root aren't intellectually valuable. One of the problems with making funny comments at root (beyond that they are just useless) is that I think people like me don't always read the article before the comments so they don't have much of a context. I can skip a thread by jumping to the next root comment if the thread is uninteresting, but I can't skip a root comment and they offer more context buildup to make funny remarks in.

Now don't get me wrong I love humor but I think it's better served within the context of slashdot, reddit, digg and so on.