> there's a strong unspoken signaling of "look at how cool I am"

I think tech should feel cool to the person using it, but it won't make a person cool either way. And it's an odd thing to fixate on.

> You're saying "my tech choices signal discernment."

I'm saying I have choices (at least, relative to earlier). I can use a Mac (or not) and that can tell you much less about the type of phone I have than a would have a few years ago.

> Bambu Labs is the new 3d printer monoculture. Meta is the AR monoculture

Then it's not really monoculture? It's narrow rather than cross-all-domains. I'm fine is there's a "toaster brand" everyone buys, or everyone likes Dyson vacuums, as long as it's not Apple producing it.

From what I see there appear to plenty of alternatives to Bambu. Instead of smugly calling people amoral because they bought a popular 3D printer, why not explain what's wrong with Bambu? I still genuinely don't know the criticism. Is it proprietary formats? Banning IP infringing content on their store? DRM? Industry lobbying for something nefarious? Lawfare? What is it that are they doing...?

> To me this article reads as soft elitism

Wouldn't the Apple bro archetype signal this more strongly? I think you may have seen a Leica in the list and way over-indexed on that, while it's actually at quite old D-LUX Typ-109 (not much newer than the Canon it replaces).

And I think the smug condescension throughout the response is closer to a kind of elitism, no?

> side of mid-life crisis

Hopefully I'm not at mid-life quite yet, and definitely not in crisis. That aside, I’m not sure it's useful to frame a critique of an article that way.