I have discovered that Metroid: Other M is actually tolerable when muted.
It doesn't matter. Just because you don't hear one of your childhood heroines being degraded and acting horribly out of character doesn't mean it isn't happening. It's like if you hear one of your neighbors beating their significant other, and you respond by putting on noise-cancelling headphones: 's not
right.
In response to Sappho: That's pretty much par for the course for everyone, and it tends to happen in direct proportion to how personal and detailed a post is. "Got a new, better job!" is easy to respond to, especially if people are vaguely aware of that individual having job trouble in their life. Things that are less
banal simple and more tied into personal history tend to draw fewer responses, at least in part, because it takes more time to compose a response, which in turn requires a higher initial level of interest.
Heck, I've had really simple one-line personal life posts completely ignored, but who cares? It's not a competition for attention, and a lack of response doesn't mean that people are consciously snubbing you. Posts in the emotion threads are pretty much like threads in forum (which is actually part of why they exist, to cut down on the mountains of random threads that really don't have enough content to merit a thread); things that happen to interest people will draw responses, things that don't won't. As above, things that are simple and easy to relate to will draw more response because more people will muster the level of investment in the topic (not much).
tl;dr: It's not personal or intentional, it's just the nature of many-threaded conversations like this. Probably 90% of the things posted in these threads is ignored entirely or gets a couple responses, and all of the discussion comes from the rest. If there is a sense of cliquishness, it probably stems from the fact that certain individuals have posted a lot about ongoing personal situations over the years, so there are people who actively care about how they're doing.