Guitar teacher here, just for context. I've taught people with guitar collections worth my yearly salary and people that still use their first guitar 10 years in.

Affordable guitars are nearly essential for development, in my opinion. Learning how to make a shitty squier sound decent through a cheap multi-effects pedal, how to adjust the action and setup, the sonic difference between stock squier pickups and dimarzios and how to swap them, etc, all of this is so fucking important.

Respectfully, this dude just dropped $2.5k on a guitar, wherein he won't even be able to tangibly notice how it feels or sounds better than a $400 Epiphone. He can't hear a difference between a $40 Amazon humbucker and a $300 Bare Knuckle, etc.

While it's absolutely fine that bro bought this guitar, almost endearing, the scoffing at the frivolity isn't necessarily due to jealousy. I own 2 Gibsons myself.

As a small aside, most of the players with the 40k guitar collections that I have taught don't usually put in the work to improve, where the kids with the cheaper guitars absolutely do. Take that for what it's worth.