Ghostcrawler (former Blizzard developer, currently at Riot Games) had a nice quote about this one:

"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom."

I believe it is related to de-personification on the Internet (or otherwise written content). In a smaller community, such would not happen.

I also wonder what would happen to the amount of haters if there were no fanboys at all. In a way, they balance each other out.

As for why famous people? Famous means influence. Whenever a non-famous people gets criticized it won't be read much. Doesn't mean it does not happen.

Passion often drives success and creativity. It would actually be likely that someone who is a hater is able to use that to their advantage and get ahead vs. someone who has no emotion and is not driven. Anecdote wise have heard stories of people who have achieved things as a result of adversity which is driven by perhaps 'hate' of what others have.

> There are innumerable examples of toxic people turning things around in a different situation.

Could also say in a different way that PG has zero data on whether this is true or not. It's an essay and an opinion and is as likely to be correct as my first paragraph.

The world is full of haters accomplishing impressive things, particularly in politics.

Edit: if you define "impressive" as "something a hater could not do" and "not impressive" as notorious things haters do, then I understand downvoting this comment. But that's begging the question.

I agree - I consider the current president both a hater and accomplisher of impressive things.

down-voters should interpret impressive as "making an impression" not "something really good"

At a later point, he did mention that teenage haters have a decent chance of growing out of it, but I concede your basic point.