I'm tempted to just go, "...Yep." And move on, but, y'know, low content post and all that.
But to say I've been thinking about this kind of thing a lot lately would be an understatement.
Even assuming creative people didn't have others seek out their work and the opportunity to comment upon it, the Internet is hard for a creator with aspirations to make some sort of living from his or her work to ignore. Hey, an unending source of people willing to give you feedback! How can one resist?
But there's no particular proof that the people willing to comment on your work are the same people who would actually buy it... Or are especially insightful about it... Or have a good handle on what other people would think about it... Or even, in some cases, honestly state why they would or wouldn't be interested in it, themselves.
I also have this frustrated sense that, not so long ago, one would hesitate to tell another adult that they were doing something wrong if what they were doing wasn't outwardly harmful; that there was a minimal sense of a kind of intrinsic worth or desert of respect, an assumption that maybe the person one might be tempted to criticize had done their own mental lifting before choosing to do what they do.
One might say unkind things about one's neighbors behind their back, but not to their faces. And if one did, one might reasonably expect to be told to mind their own business, or something about glass houses.
Now all the gossip happens in the face of the person its about, or perhaps the standard for "outwardly harmful" has become dizzyingly low, or both. Everyone's in a glass house, but we're such accurate stone-throwers that we never give it a second thought.
It seems that, often, the wise thing for a creator to do in the face of controversy is stay out of it, knowing that the short attention spans of the incensed will inevitably move on to other targets.
But there's a tremendous irony that the artists we turn to for insight and ideas would be well considered to refuse to render opinions when it comes to their own work.