[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by issybird

So long as negative commentary is directed at the work or author and not at the reader, I find it constructive and informative.

The post that cfrizz was responding to was almost entirely made up of a quote that was about readers. The quote was even prefaced with:

Here's an answer that someone had written online concerning readers :

I don't care if other people like or dislike the books I enjoy. But... it's kind of like food. Recently, my roommate had me taste a new pasta sauce he brought home from the store. I liked it, he didn't. He said, "Well, that's because you're not Italian and you don't know good sauce." We then had a nice little conversation about him dismissing my tastes as inferior instead of acknowledging that we just might like different things.

It was especially ridiculous because I usually make all my sauces from scratch and he almost always likes them.

We can discuss books just fine without going into that territory. We can also lament the discoverability of the types of books we like without blaming other readers for mucking up the marketplace. We can say we don't care for most bestsellers without harping on "the crowd".

But stuff like this (from what Luffy posted from a source that's still to be identified):

If the average person has relatively little experience or knowledge, it shouldn't be surprising that they make decisions to support things which are of low quality, because they do not have the ability to recognize high-quality items, and because low-quality items are often advertised to them aggressively.

...isn't necessary for constructive commentary of books. THAT is what people are reacting to.