I understand @wordsword-- sometimes it's easy to get to the point of writing an entire essay in response to a post. Which actually makes me happy, because it means there was something there worth thinking about.

When it comes to posts (or blogs, and articles) a lot of responses also tell me that people didn't actually READ what was there... they just reacted to the title and started writing our their opinion... whether right or wrong.

Some weeks (months?) back, I wrote a piece about being a skeptic, and how it often can get you labeled as a "downer" or "buzzkill." Not agreeing with a majority view... AND having evidence to back it up... can often get you into a tricky spot... for many people it can be more important to "BE" right than whether something "IS" (factually) right.

Things like art, music, creative expression become really tricky areas because then you also have to deal with people's "ego investment" in their creations. Someone (evidently) puts their heart and soul into something that looks to ME like my dog vomited on a piece of paper... and everyone is calling it "artistic genius." At BEST my feedback would be "That's certainly very unusual, and quite unlike anything I've ever seen before." Which is certainly truthful.