> When phone cameras were very bad, you were guaranteed to get a better camera with any standalone one; even a point-and-shoot Walmart special. No thought was r

> When phone cameras were very bad, you were guaranteed to get a better camera with any standalone one; even a point-and-shoot Walmart special. No thought was really necessary beyond price. But now that phone cameras are better, you have to work at it to find a worthwhile standalone camera (and that camera is much more expensive, relatively). I don't think that this analogy stands up quite so well - if your camera has removable lenses, it'll be better than a phone. It will be expensive, although given the price of phones these days, the phone is actually probably more expensive than a beginner mirrorless. But analogies are known to be fragile when stretched. > Or another way of reading it is "it used to be easy to be a snob! Just pay more and you're guaranteed to get some good shit!" and now that 'trick' doesn't work. > I think there's a deeper thing here, which is the "desire for secret knowledge", almost a form of gnosticism or something. We want to "know a secret that isn't widely known" even if it doesn't actually really help us any. This makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, it's completely foreign to me - I only care about being or getting better than yesterday. I don't care at all about how good I have it in relation to other people. But I understand that that is very motivating to a lot - perhaps most - people.