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True that nobody is above encouragement or praise... but I think I get what's being said.

As a fanfiction writer, (horrible, I know, but it's what I do...) there are two kinds of reviews that I really don't like.

The first is the one-liner. "WOW THIS STORY ROCKS UPDATE PLZ!"
While it's nice to know somebody liked the story, this doesn't really tell me what about the story they liked, so I can't go further into that. It doesn't tell me what they didn't like, so I don't know what to work on. It doesn't tell me squat except that the story was read and the reader apparently liked it. (And even that's questionable. With a line that ambiguous, they may have even just skipped past the story and left the review without reading it...)

The second is a review with suggestions that were obviously not thought twice about before being stuffed in, (especially pairing suggestions, since I've noted several times in my author notes that I don't/can't write romance).
One good example of this that I can think of off the top of my head was a review I received once telling me that I should "include reincarnation somehow" when there wasn't even anything about dying in the main storyline. If I'd heeded this request, I would have had to create a whole new unimportant side character just to have them die and be reincarnated. That would be stupid.
I think this is what was meant by requests for "happy fluffy bunnies and ejaculated rainbows" that, if followed, would turn the story into a carbon copy of millions of other pieces of junk out there.

So, yes, we as writers choose whether or not we write for the story itself or for the masses. However, even if we choose not to heed the pointless reviews, that doesn't stop them from being useless towards progressing as a writer.

My favorite kinds of reviews are those where the reader has clearly started writing the review as they started reading the story itself. I get comments on individual sections of the story, both good and bad.
"I loved your description for the battle sequence between..." and "I think these comments here were a little out of character. Maybe include an explanation here?"
You know? Comments, suggestions, etc. Even corrections on Grammar in some cases is appreciated merely because it's something concrete that tells me that the reader actually read the story.

So while those kinds of reviews are rare, they are well loved and well appreciated. Please, reviewers, make your reviews be of this kind! If you want to get on an author's good side, this is the best way to do it!

I think that most growing writers (writers who continue to nurture their talent as they mature) will eventually grow past needing a squee-squad, at about the same time that she squee-squad starts to get bored with what they're writing. If anyone finds him/herself getting depressed at the 'smut-and-drama-between-magical-animeish-character' fans' turnoff, I think it's time that writer asks him/herself if they really want to stay at the same level of writing forever, or if they want to move up.

Tilly, I got the impression that the OP was pretty much talking about people on writing sites, like FF.net and places like that. The internet-story-posting community. Every writer worth his salt has someone who likes his writing, but that's a bit different from a rainbow-ejalutions-craving squee squad, dontcha think?