In a tournament it depends on several factors including the table and your chip stack in relation to the blinds, or M.
If your M is large, then you can play more speculative
hands like small pocket pairs in an attempt to flop sets which may break someone holding a hand like AQ on an A-3-7 flop. However, if the blinds are large then you probably don't want to commit any of your chips when you're going to be throwing the hand away after the flop 88% of the time.
Position is important as well since limping in early position with a hand like this leaves you vulnerable to being re-raised behind, not even getting the opportunity to take a flop. Folding small pp's (22-66) in early position isn't a bad move, especially for beginners who may take them too far. In late position, maybe a few people limped already and you're getting great
odds on trying for your set, but in early position you're basically hoping for the correct odds with no reason to think you'll actually get them; in late position you have a good idea where you stand.
The table itself is quite important. Are most pots raised? Who's raising? Who's limping in? How do they react when someone limps? There's more but you get the idea. You want to know these things to determine whether perhaps limping up front with 33 is all right. If one limper leads to 5 guys limping and taking a flop, well then yeah that's probably okay to try and take a cheap flop with your 3's. But if there's a few guys that bump up pots preflop, and like to isolate limpers, well you're just asking for trouble and throwing money away by putting that blind into the pot.
As far as your play goes, you claim to have had a solid read on the guy, and you made a solid play. You got it all in as a 2:1 favorite, but sadly it wasn't to be. People like to poke and prod at others to make themselves feel superior, and if it's online, welll......that's just what they do. Usually in person unless it's with friends nobody would say anything to you, but they might comment on how someone stacked off with ace high. Who cares though? Phil Helmuth berated Tom Dwan for a perfectly justifiable play getting all in with TT in a heads up tourny, because that's just what Phil does. He was telling Tom Dwan that he's a donkey, LOL!!! Just keep making +EV decisions, and you'll be fine.