If people can make you feel like shit because of your opinions then it's not them that's at fault. Especially if it consistently happens with a variety of people. By all means be passionate, write how you want, talk how you want. But the whole point of being outspoken about the things that you love is that people will disagree - because not everyone's the same. If you don't like people disagreeing then you shouldn't invite comment by splurging your opinion far and wide.
This relates to a post I read on the Embrace board. Someone wrote a typical "So, who likes the so and sos" (I can't remember the band) and two of us wrote that we didn't. I mean for fuck's sake, what did the person expect? They invite comment, but they expect people to kiss up to their opinion. It's never going to happen. that's just naivety. They could retort by saying "if you don't have anything nice to say bla bla urgh" and maybe so. But in the process we kill any kind of critical process and objective thinking.
I hear people talking about "snobs". I could sit here and be really pretentious and list the bands that I like to try and prove how I'm open minded. But the truth is I don't care if you think I'm a snob. I rest safe in the knowledge I'm not still caught up in the same sort of music I liked six years ago.
As a final point. I generally only take really issue with the bands I was talking about yesterday - the lazy Evening Session ones. I haven't got any patience for them any more (read yesterday's post). I'm generally fairly positive about bands outside of that area. But because a lot of people like that sort of music, I draw a lot of criticism when I diss them. To those who criticise me for that, I say "meh".