Anecdotally, I established a website in 2005 featuring long-form nonfiction, and it gained a respectable following. After years of posting several new articles per month, I started feeling the burnout, so I took a break, and then slowed my publication rate to one new post every few months. I soon became the recipient of a deluge of nasty emails from people who were furious that I had reduced the amount of free content I provided. This small, vocal subset of readers obviously enjoyed my work, otherwise they would be indifferent to a reduction in output, yet they were emailing me imploring me to kill myself because I am a failure.

I really wonder what their day-to-day internal monologue is like.