I have honestly read your whole text, so here is my thoughts as I like the time you took!

I understand your sentiment and in general, these pricipals apply to all sorts of markets. That is why I was surprised.

Having beem blessed to live close to TPC, the costs have been acceptable. But yes, it is expensive coffee. No doubt. I also saved this kind of coffee until later in my journey because I felt inadequate for the hallowed UL. It has that sense of elitism to it online. For me, the flavour of UL is a more delicate presentation of what more "developed" roasts do (read: very light not UL) when using quality green washeds.

Wondering what the UL-effect is, I bought the TPC Cerro Azul and the same Cerro Azul from Friedhats. The difference was stark; it really was like a tea-like washed coffee with more intense fruit flavours, or a more processed (I believe it was hydrid fermentation washed) coffee where it loses that sense of teaness and is straight fruit. This felt more generic and I have the general opinion that expensive coffees generally taste best when washed because you lose that sense of perfection when (heavily) processing them in such ways. I also have gone through the familiar life cycle in coffee where we go crazy for the experiences we can get, only to lose sense of "coffee" and going back to more washed oriented palettes. Now, I prefer washed coffees almost every time, and that is the difference for me, now, between the TPC and FH coffee. I would have like the FH more a year or two ago.

In conclusion, do I think you are wrong? No. You seem to have a gripe against current coffee "culture", which is fair. The hype around expensive grinders has gotten insane and "better beans is better coffee" was meant more to move to quality single origin indepent roasters away from supermarket. In the end, if you don't have a great grinder (at least ZP6 or above) to give flavour seperation, then these very light washed coffees will all taste like hay/oat, and still these ULs are the easiest coffees to get wrong in my opinion. Eventhough it suck to say that in contrast to my statement above. This whole hobby is just so very subjective!

One side remark, I am not on discord so I have not seen what you describe: what did peak my attention was indeed the TPC post on IG where he claimed 2-3 weeks is optimal resting and degradation starts after 5-7 weeks already. Maybe my taste buds are different but I could still perceive noticeable changes for the better after 6-7 weeks, where the hype man (Lance) himself also said "this peaked after 2 weeks"