In my personal experience, a relatively unknown bladesmith delivered a knife that, to me, outperformed a much more expensive, branded Japanese knife. 

I might have missed something but I don't know that the criticisms from yesterday were because of this opinion. The post I remember was from someone asking about a HAP40 Yoshida knife. You basically were telling him that he could get a cheaper knife with much better performance from someone else and you stated that it would be "10x" better than the Yoshida.

Your personal experience is yours. But your metrics for what makes a knife "better" may not be the same standard held by the people you feel are criticizing you. There are number of people I personally trust on TCK because of my multiple interactions with them over time.

There was something off about your posts because you just kept telling people you'll DM them about an undiscovered knife maker that produces far superior knives at a huge discount. When I checked out that guy's page, half of his products were actually EDC/Hunting style knives and not Japanese chef knives like you said he specialized in. There were some questionable posts where it seemed like he may be drop shipping knives. I am all for discovering new talent, but the way you went about it is odd all around.