The visible reply count cannot measure whether anybody felt understood.

Counts measure activity rather than contact. A busy thread can be full of people talking past one another, while a single quiet reply is the thing that lands. Because the number is visible and the understanding is not, attention drifts to the number, and people begin optimising for it without meaning to. Volume is the easiest signal to read and the least informative.

After your next conversation, online or otherwise, ask whether anyone sounded more understood at the end than at the start. That is the measure worth having. In your own thread, one careful reply to the person actually asking beats twenty quick ones.