Quote - Having gone to an art school with a strong emphasis on critique I'm often astounded at how thin skinned many poserites are about criticism. 

Art schools can be pretty brutal. In order to survive that environment one needs to learn that a criticism of the work isn't (necessarily) a personal attack on one's character. When my friend was pinning up the results of months of design work for an end-of-year crit and the director of the school of architecture said "Take that shit off my walls" my friend didn't take it personally, he didn't even take the work down. He presented a very convincing argument for his decisions and passed the exam quite well.

After you've been through an environment like that, when you post your work and say "Tell me what you think of it" you really mean exactly that - you have already detatched your own self-worth from the work, the work is on trial, not you. (You're also only going to take the advice you agree with or advice from those you respect, anything else you will just discard, but that's a whole different topic).

But different strokes for different folks, most artists here liked their work enough to post it and they are delighted that all their friends like it too. The family cat is their harshest critic and they'd be happy to keep it that way. I say let 'em.

Quote - Is it any wonder that poser is the laughing stock of CG?

Indeed, but that's okay. It doesn't hurt the people who enjoy Posering for fun, it only affects Smith Micro when they try to get the rest of the CG world to take the tool seriously.