Yes, it feels more like people are building some big collective illustrated book here than a place for communication. And I'm definitely, not completely on purpose, contributing to that atmosphere ... because, for  now, I'm very focused on relatively long posts with many photographs because I see that this strategy leads to bigger rewards and faster increase of my Hivepower ... these posts also make me spend most of the free time I have on them ... and I'm usually left with not many time to explore all the interesting stuff that gets published every day. I hope ... and I'm pretty convinced ... that the next year, or a bit sooner, I'll be doing more exploring of other people's work ... and more commenting in a more relaxed way. 
But, when I think a bit more about this, the lack of time is only part of the problem in my case ... there is another, mysterious part :) I don't know why exactly it was always a bit hard for me to come up with a comment, even before, on Facebook if the post isn't a joke. I appreciate the good serious content, but often I just don't feel like I have something to say ... besides " Good job" ... " Great post" ... and so on. I'm trying to develop my comment capabilities ... but the progress is slow. 
When it comes to replying to the comments under my posts, that somehow is easier and I almost always reply ... if I'm out of ideas to write something, then I just upvote the comment :) and that feels like a good enough alternative.