I recall that post being pretty polarizing on HN. I think PG himself showed up and ranted about how the people calling it consumerist schlock had it all wrong, and this was a sign of HN's decline or something. Anyway personally I found the post fairly repulsive. It reminded me of my thought patterns during some of my grossest excursions into materialist obsession - spending hours researching what "the best" thing to buy is, when I would have been much, much happier just getting something at random than agonizing about it - or just not buying anything at all.