I don't know that wanting to wash one's hands of a project that gets constant, negative feedback is "overemotional." For someone who seems to have an interest in writing, I'm a bit surprised that you'd say "words are just words." No. Words are icons. They are access points to concepts, thoughts and feelings. They rely on the imagination to create context, color and meaning. Imagine then, waves of hate crashing against portions of your life that may or may not have anything to do with whatever project you're putting out there. That would be tough. Real tough.
I can't say that I've experienced the same level of hate that Fish has, but just about everyone on the Internet has dealt with some form of negativity and flaming. Maybe I should have worded it differently--words sent on by a bunch of random teenagers from behind their desktop computers shouldn't mean anything. If you're going to be a creative individual then you need to accept that people are going to criticize and hate on what you are doing almost every step of the way, but you gotta ask yourself what's more important: the words they say or your passion. Again, I haven't experienced thousands of 16-year-old white kids telling me to kill myself like Fish has but I would think my passion for what I do would outweigh whatever hateful tweets anyone could come up with. I'm not him though.
That's just it though. It's not simply teenagers. It's a lot of people who dig the anonymity and the ability to attack and hurt other people with little fear of repercussions. The whole article is about how being dismissive of the problem is how it got to be such a problem in the first place. It's also about how passion can turn from a painful sort of love into something simply painful. Everyone has their breaking point. It's easy to understand when you've seen a strong person get broken or had it happen yourself. Not so easy otherwise. Don't forget that bulletproof vests are no good against knives.
To me, whether someone is a teenager or an adult or a toddler, it doesn't matter. As a grown man, I would never allow somebody else's hateful words to break down my will to create and do what I love. I'm not saying getting hated on would be fun or anything, but I mean--you work so hard to achieve something, put so much of yourself into it, and you're ready to quit because a bunch of people want to hate on you? Take that shit as motivation, that the only reason such hateful words are being thrown at you is because of how popular and successful you are and how jealous and pitiful they are. I don't want to make light of somebody telling somebody else to kill themselves, but the ugly truth of the matter is that hateful trolls have existed as long as the internet has. I don't have any solutions for that issue and I don't know if there is one. Again, I'm not Phil Fish and I won't pretend to have any knowledge of this level of vitriol he has experienced. That's just my take on it--the ultimate victory would be in surviving and proving to all of the nasty bottom-feeders that you're stronger than they are and have more will than they do.
It seems to me that we're talking about two different ends of what I see as an arc. You're talking about the first punch, where someone is still on their feet. I'm talking about when someone's been stomped on . . . for a while. Like, they're still taking a kicking and their eyes swelled shut a long time ago. Note that I never said anything about giving up, just that I think it's understandable that "a sea of shit" could really wear a guy down. Not everyone is cut out to stick it out. To think that everyone has it in them to "make it" if they just "keep hanging on" is pretty unrealistic, in my eyes.