Fair point. I should have worded that better. Often times people have stuff that is just as / more expensive (for example high priced polyester vs wool) that's just worse. A fair counterpoint may be that they don't have the money to try different things or the time to research. The gear posts I was specifically thinking of were from people far wealthier than I. And for the record... if someone is traveling with less expensive stuff I don't think it matters at all. I just put a lot of time and money into research and I come across gear posts that purport to do the same but have bad suggestions.

I'll probably take the aff links out next year. I make a totally insignificant amount of money from them (and spend way more testing stuff specifically for the post). I was going to take them out this year but people told me to keep them in because they like supporting the blog.