Sometimes I will enter discussion wanting to talk about X, but my correspondent seems keen to jump around from topic to topic. They will respond with a question loosely about X, and I feel obliged to respond. We're now talking about Y. They will then ask a question loosely about Y, and I feel obliged to respond. We're now talking about Z.
Before I know it, we're talking about L. I don't want to be talking about L. Fuck L. I wanted to be talking about X. I probably would have been content to talk about Y or Z for a while if we could stay on them for any length of time, but we can't, because there are so many other letters and the person I'm talking to can't resist them. I've learned to nip this process in the bud. Sometimes that's with a polite "I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in discussing this". Sometimes it's by ignoring them.
TL;DR: if I feel my correspondent is going to take the discussion on an unproductive wild goose chase, I may stop responding.
ETA: I'm not necessarily blaming my correspondent for being a bad discussion partner here. It may very well be down to different expectations from the discussion. I've probably come across as an attention-deficient topic-hopper myself on more than one occasion.
I often feel guilty for ignoring other people's comments or questions, and frustrated when other people seem to be ignoring me. If I can't indicate to someone exactly why I'm not answering, or can't receive such an indication myself, I can at least help my future selves and others obtain a better probability distribution over such reasons. To that end, I'm listing all of the reasons I can think of for someone to not respond to a comment/question, to save the effort of regenerating these hypotheses from scratch each time and prevent the possibility of failing to consider the actual reason. Note that these are not meant to be mutually exclusive.
If I missed any reasons (that happen often enough to be worth including in this list), please give them in the comments. See also this related comment.