I get asked this question more than any other feature request: "Why doesn't Jottings have comments?"

It's a fair question. Every major blogging platform—Medium, Substack, Hashnode, even plain old WordPress—has comments. They're expected. They're how readers engage. They're how you build community. So when I built Jottings without them, people noticed.

But this wasn't an oversight. It was intentional.

The Engagement Anxiety Trap

Let me be honest about what comments do to writers. They create anxiety.

The moment you publish something with comments enabled, you start thinking about how people will react. You check back obsessively. You see a comment and feel compelled to respond. You worry about criticism or, weirdly, you worry when there are no comments at all. Zero comments feels like nobody read your post. One comment feels insufficient. Suddenly, your writing success is measured not by what you said, but by what others think about what you said.

This feedback loop is toxic for the writing practice.

I noticed this in myself. When I had comments enabled on my old blog, I'd spend more time managing discussions than writing. I'd re-read my own posts not to revise them, but to anticipate objections. I'd soften my arguments preemptively to avoid conflict. I'd write for the comments section instead of for myself.

Then I turned comments off. The difference was immediate.

My writing became braver. Not reckless, but honest. I could say what I meant without performing for an invisible audience of commenters. I could explore half-formed ideas without feeling obligated to defend them against every possible counterargument. Writing became thinking again, not public relations.

The False Community Promise

Here's what platforms won't tell you: comments don't actually build community for most writers. They build engagement metrics.

Big difference.

For the 0.1% of bloggers with thousands of engaged readers, comments might create meaningful discourse. For everyone else? Comments are mostly drive-by takes, spam, or worse—aggressive criticism from people hiding behind anonymity.

I've moderated forums. I've managed comment sections. I know what they look like at scale. It's not the thoughtful exchange of ideas that we're promised. It's signal-to-noise chaos. And the noise requires moderation, which requires time and emotional labor.

Jottings isn't designed for that dynamic. It's designed for writers who want to own their thoughts, not broadcast them into a comment section and hope for the best.

Your Voice, Not the Reaction

When you publish on Jottings, you're not performing for engagement metrics. You're not trying to go viral. You're not optimizing for comments.

You're writing because you have something to say.

That's a radical shift from how most people think about online writing. But it's also liberating. Without the comment section, your post isn't measured by how many people argued with it or loved it—it's measured by whether it's true to what you meant to express.

This is especially important for personal writing. If you're publishing thoughts about your life, your work, your philosophy—do you really want a comment section? Do you want strangers weighing in on your decision? Do you want to defend your perspective against people who took two minutes to read your post?

I didn't think so.

Jottings gives you permission to just publish. To say your thing and move on. To write for yourself and the few people who genuinely want to know what you think.

Engagement Still Exists, It's Just Different

This doesn't mean Jottings sites are one-way broadcasts. People engage with your writing all the time.

They share your posts on social media. They email you directly. They mention your thoughts in their own blogs. They think about your ideas and come back to read more. They recommend your site to friends.

That's real engagement. It's just not captured by a comment counter.

If someone wants to tell you what they think about your post, they'll find you. They'll send an email. They'll mention you on Twitter. They'll start their own post responding to yours. This friction actually filters for genuine engagement instead of casual hot takes.

You can add social media links to your site. Jottings supports that. People can find you and reach out if they really want to. But the decision to engage is theirs, and the space for discussion is theirs—not trapped in your comment section.

An Intentional Design Choice

I want to be clear: this isn't a limitation we're planning to add around. It's not a "pro feature" waiting to be released. It's not something I couldn't figure out technically.

It's a choice. A deliberate, philosophical choice about what kind of platform Jottings should be.

We could add comments tomorrow. The engineering is trivial. But I won't, because it would undermine everything Jottings is designed to do: give writers a space to publish their thoughts without the anxiety, performance pressure, and engagement metrics that plague other platforms.

If you want a comment section, there are many platforms that offer it beautifully. WordPress. Medium. Substack. Ghost. They're all great in their own ways.

But if you want a place to write without that pressure? Where your voice matters more than the reaction to it? Where you can publish your thoughts and trust that the right people will find them?

That's Jottings.

The Deeper Truth

Here's what I've learned from building Jottings: the most important thing a platform can do isn't to amplify your voice. It's to protect it.

Protect it from the anxiety of metrics. Protect it from the need to perform. Protect it from the tyranny of engagement.

Comments create pressure. They turn publishing into a conversation you have to manage. They measure your worth by reactions instead of intention.

I didn't want to build a platform that does that. So I built one that doesn't.

If that feels right to you—if you're tired of managing comments, chasing engagement, performing for an audience—then Jottings might be exactly what you're looking for.

It's a small, quiet rebellion against the attention economy. A place where your thoughts matter more than how people react to them.

And honestly? That's exactly the kind of writing I want to read.