It's sad that there are so many griefers and haters out there, but there are worse problems to have than being wildly successful.

I pity what people do to society in general with their self-destructive attitudes. We all suffer as a result when we drive people like Notch out of positions of leadership.

You see the same in politics where the truly good and earnest people are also the ones with a conscience and too much self-respect to submit themselves to the abuse of public office.

Only heartbreaking in the sense this is the new reality for many people. If you ever gain some semblance of popularity, everything you say and do is over analyzed. From your Twitter feeds, your work, your public comments, everything.

Notch just secured the best thing he could have. Now he has the money to do what he wants and not be at the forefront of what he created. Something I'm sure he's been wanting to do for a long time. Just like he said, he gets to step back into the shadows, where he's more comfortable, out of the limelight and content to do what he really wants to do.

I can only imagine what we'd be writing had he opted out say a year ago, before MS bought his company. What would we be saying then?

I feel very great sadness for Notch.

I really hope he finds fun and joy. I am immensely grateful to him (and the rest of Mojang) for Minecraft.

Yeah, but like I said earlier, a bit of rest and some time out of the spotlight and he'll get bored. Then he'll really appreciate it (even if he never wants that light shining on him all the time, again).

Well, there are a lot of dicks online, but I think twitter rage-storms or whatever seem to affect some people a lot more deeply than others.

The people who deal with it best I think are sort of the aloof types. They may not even read their own Twitter feed, delegating it to a social-media staffer. Notch has the problem that he uses it as a personal account and is on it regularly, so he reads comments @directed at him, tries to reply to them, etc. He also has a public email address that he reads, and it sounds like people send weird/angry emails to that, too, so it ends up going beyond just Twitter. I could see getting annoyed if people were constantly emailing me in that manner.

I think he's clearly a nice guy and cares deeply about what he has created and the people that use it.

However, I think a saying I heard today summed it up quite well: "A few boos can drown out a lot of cheers."

With a sense of perspective as to what he has achieved, the people that complain must be a very small minority.

Also, I feel that people are reluctant to say "thank you". They'll join if the crowd is cheering, but are hesitant to say it out loud by themselves.