Since you seem to find courtesy such a difficult concept, I would much appreciate your leaving me alone. Believe me, I'll be more than happy to never speak to you again.

It's not really a matter of which one is more important. It's not a matter of "If you need cheerleaders you must not be a good writer; good writers can succeed without them." Some writers need them, some don't. I'm one of the ones who do. Does that make me a bad writer? No. I just sometimes need someone to re-emphasise my worth as a writer. That's the cheerleader's role - to help me be the best writer I can be. But a critiquer's role is to make sure my writing is the best it can be - to help me make my writing the best it can be.

Sidenote - I wrote fanfic before I started writing my own thing.

Ok, admittedly, it was only 3 and a half chapters of fanfic, but still. Fanfic is a decent way to start out. You get encouragement to continue and finish, it's a good way to get into the writing habit. You can learn from the writing process. Sure, a lot of the comments aren't worth much as critique. But sometimes, especially when first starting out, that's what you need to hear - less criticism, more encouragement just to keep going. Once you turn to writing seriously, with the intent of getting published, that's when you need good, solid constructive criticism the most.