As someone in his forties who was born here and has lived all of his
life here, I have an answer for you, but of course, it's just the
opinion of one person.

There is wonderful terminal an email client called 'mutt' with an
interesting motto, "All email clients suck, but mutt sucks less." This,
of course is an adaptation and adoption of a very old programming
adage, "All software sucks, but some software sucks less." Some consider
it a pessimistic saying, and others consider it a realistic saying. If
you prefer a more positive restatement, "All software can be improved,
but some software needs less improvement," might be a fair corollary.

Amongst technical people, specifically programmers, the above should
show you the underlying reason for the criticism; their first thought is
how to improve things. The look for the rough spots in implementation,
presentation, and of course, usefulness. Sadly, many are willing to
enter a debate of opinion rather than do a fair analysis with real data
for supporting evidence.

In quick paced communication, remembering to also be positive when
looking for ways to improve something is often forgotten. You can see it
all the time on HN and other text based communication mediums, but it
also happens verbally in person. One poorly phrased statement, and the
discussion escalates.

If you prefer to look at this positively, consider the criticisms to be
bug reports. Sure, bug reports are "bad news" but it is far better to
know about a problem than to not know about it.

Your latter two points are identical; both are due to others not being
impressed, or more succinctly, not being supportive or excited. When
people are inundated with new tech every day as well as inundated with
marketing and advertising about new tech, people learn to ignore it. You
probably ignore banner advertisements, and probably ignore the text
advertisements on the right side of your Google results. The more of it
you see, the more you learn to ignore it. The people in the Bay Area
have seen far more than most, and as a result, they can and do ignore
more than most.

The more annoyed you become by needing to ignore stuff, the closer you
get to wanting to block it completely. If you have the technical
acumen to block it, you do block it, and hence the rise of AdBlockPlus,
Readability, InstaPaper, ReadItLater, FlipBoard, and countless related
bits of software and configuration. Even TiVo is just a different aspect
of the same issue of fighting inundation. Spam filter? --Yep, same
thing. The things to realize are the trends; more people being annoyed,
more people learning to ignore, blocking tech becoming easier to use,
more people embracing blocking tech, ...

You want my attention... --just like everybody else.

If you think about social networks like Facebook on a fundamental level,
you can see them for what they really are; an attempt to grab attention.
You create an inflated caricature of yourself with the hope of
attracting "friends" of some sort; everyone there is trying to grab your
attention. Twitter? --Yep, same thing. On top of the real people trying
to grab your attention, there are also companies operating on these
supposedly "social" platforms trying to grab your attention through paid
placements and gamification.

Come on and face the facts; you've probably ignored an invitation when
your cousin invited you to the birthday party of her three year old kid.
You also probably ignored the shared images, wall posts, tweets or
whatever else that resulted from said three year old's birthday party.

A response of not impressed and not interested is to be expected. You
have been conditioned to ignore things, and so has everyone else to one
degree or another. The people in the Bay Area are just a bit more
conditioned than people in other places.

You might run away to Austin or Charlotte, but doing so is simply buying
time. It's really just a matter of time until people there are
conditioned by the same forces that have conditioned most of the people
around here. The interesting question is whether or not impressing
people in a non-technical populace is better? Since the bar for
impressive is much higher here, you may benefit more by receiving
feedback from more discerning and experienced (and critical) people.

Preventing annoyance and avoiding apathy may be difficult, but it is not
impossible. The humongous secret to being fascinating is simply being
fascinated. If you are fascinated, others will find you fascinating.
Similarly, if you are excited by your work, others will also find it
exciting, and if you are impressed by your work, others will also find
it impressive.

The toughest truth to accept is, it's a decision. You've decided to be
turned off, and hence, you turn off others. You've decided not to be
impressed, and hence, others are not impressed. You've decided not to be
fascinated, and hence, others don't consider you fascinating.

You can change your decisions.

I know it might sting a bit since it stung for me when I learned it and
it took me some time to accept it. It's not easy, but it is good for you
in the long run. I realize you're posting anon with a throw-away
account, but my email address is in my profile if you want to contact
me.