Personally I like to make it a point to break this rule from time to time to reduce this pattern.
Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling.
THANK YOU
How many times have you seen a deeply nested Reddit thread where each reply is maybe a single sentence long, and they're all low hanging word puns? Just completely worthless threads that are all noise.