Beyond Selidor

I agree with you on both counts, but I would also add that if people on either side can't handle reasonable criticism (like, fans telling creators that such and such a theme or storyline is problematic) or canon not going the way they'd like (e.g. fans complaining that such and such a ship didn't get made canon), they're probably better staying away from the conversation altogether.

It never ceases to amaze me, for example, how thin-skinned some published professional authors can be. Anne Rice has sold millions of novels over a forty-year period, and yet she sends her fans to attack mildly negative Amazon reviewers. As a postgraduate student, I have some experience with academic publishing, and let me tell you that the reviewers in academic publishing (both peer-reviewers deciding if an article will be accepted for publication, and reviewers writing about other academics' books for journal articles) do not hold back. They are critical, and even sometimes downright nasty. I can't imagine how some of those creators would cope in academia!

Similarly, if you can only cope with the most recent storyline on SPN (not getting specific in case people are worried about spoilers) by getting drunk, sobbing hysterically, harassing SPN actors and CW executives on Twitter and writing endless angry Tumblr posts about it, it might be time to step away from the computer (and from SPN altogether).