IDK, as hard as it is it's important to not put too much stock in reddit karma. I've found that the same views expressed in the same way in the same subreddits can do wildly different based on who the first person who sees it is; it's very rare that people see a negative-karma comment and help it in the other direction, and vice-versa, but people are happy to uncritically pile on if it seems vaguely right to do so.

My first comment was maybe read as asserting that there actually is no difference or attacking the user, even though I don't think that's particularly fair. Someone came by and saw it at -1, then read it* expecting something negative, found a negative reading, then downvoted and moved on. Then 10 more someones.

I think it's a lot harder to read my second comment that way since I just ignored the downvotes and thanked the helpful responder. It becomes clear I actually am just not picking up on something (in my case because I'm neurodivergent probably). So people are more likely to upvote, then seeing it in positive karma, read it also expecting positivity. And so on.

The moral of the story? Never, ever bother with karma. It's much more a matter of who happens across your content and when than a measure of the content itself.

*The fact that points are above the comment definitely contributes