That's the reason the "Critique Group" was formed because of people geting tired of the gushy praise for the sake of comments and hopefully garning a recipricol view of their gallery type comments.

Some people go through the gallery and comment on everything and everything...good or bad, with gushing praise comments, in the hopes that the person will have a look at their gallery and leave comments. It's their way of establishing a "network" to generate views anc comments.

I know when I was a co-ordinator and did my gallery day, that I frequently saw the same members leaving what had to be copy/paste comments on practically every image uploaded. 

I'd rather have 5 views and  5 really meaningful, honest comments than 1000 views and 200 fake ones. However, not everyone is like that. Many seem to measure their worth based on their popularity in the gallery. Not all... but many do.

When I view an image in the gallery of someone who is not a member of the "Critique Group", I spend time looking at the image, but will only comment if I really feel that the image has moved me in some way.

If the image has done nothing for me except give me the "pretty image" feeling without anything emotional attached to it, then I won't comment. Same goes for images that I find trashy or just plain awful. 

I will however always comment on someone's very first gallery upload in order to give them encouragement and let them know that they are doing well for a first upload. I will let them know what I like about the image and offer them suggestions on ways that they can improve it. Simply said... I treat them as members of the "critique group" and give them honest feed back, but in a more subtle way.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi