> The beauty of sharing things is the feedback you get from others

I agree with this, less so with the validation part, but receiving feedback from others is lovely, pretty much always! But with that said, this isn't the goal or even intention for a lot of people who publish their written texts on the internet. Sometimes people just want to unload, share some tip, or any of the other countless of motivations people can have.

There is nothing that makes people who hit "Publish" and never look at the analytics do anything less "essential" than people obsessing over the metrics, they just have different motivations and reasons.

Personally, I don't feel the need of quantifying anything about most of the stuff I publish one way or another. For example, I don't really care about the HN upvotes/points. Sure, it's fun that some people are enjoying what I write, but I'm participating for the discussions themselves and to learn something new, both about myself and others. Upvotes don't really give me that, but thoughtful replies really do!

I think there's an easy litmus test for everyone who claims not to care at all how many people read what they wrote:

Would you be as happy just saving that file to your hard drive, instead of publishing it online?