Yes, I see what you mean, Susie. Being able to publish an article and then not get any comeback does have the advantage of protecting you from all that.

The thing is, though, if a website doesn't have their own comments section, the opinions still get written, just elsewhere, e.g. Twitter and Facebook. At least if a website has its own comments section, it is able to police it.

I have a long history of being on forums and using YouTube a lot, where my tendency has always been to write long comments, and often engage in debates with people. I'm used to disagreeing with people and having people disagree with me, and trying to survive that. Not always easy, but for the most part worthwhile.

This is why I've taken to Medium like a duck to water. Writing a load of text about an opinion is nothing new to me (as you can see right here 😆). And my Eckhart Tolle article has lots of people disagreeing with me in the comments, which is fine by me because it's my highest earning article so far, so they can carry on.