Cartridges: Complete Scam?

The variety of definitions being applied to the word 'scam' amaze me. 

Upselling a product to someone who doesn't need it is not a scam.

Expensive products that people willingly buy and work as described are not scams.

Putting a high end component into a mess of system and saying it doesn't work does not count as a scam.

A scam is knowingly deceiving someone either by getting them to pay for goods or services that they will not receive, or that are not, in good faith, what was agreed to or advertised.

Why is it that more and more threads lately are opened with a pretty antagonistic header, what exactly does the op hope to accomplish with that besides a number of equally antagonistic responses or outright derision and the possibility of not being taken seriously at all.

Now I know under current handle I have a low post count and join date of 2013 but aeons ago I was a member but lost all the info and just easier to start again.

Back even 10 years ago the forums ( and the world in general) was a much more civilised and nicer place to be, just go skim through some older threads to see the type of discussion and the general level of decency and politeness involved.
Nowadays I see way too much vitriol and a lot of self important people who come across as it all being about me, me, me, rather than actually wanting any real answers or even to hear partial truths.

Just my 5 cents worth and my opinion only.

it is the same all over audio and many industries,  High performance comes at a price, but to get beyond that, the cost can be astronomical... 
 
You have a car that will run a 1/4 mile in 14 seconds, you drop $1000 in the engine and get it below 12 seconds,  you need to drop another $3000 to get it below 10 seconds.... how much to make it even faster?  
The tweaking and expertise to get better performance in a phono cartridge is no different.... 
a 12 second 1/4 mile car is fast, but is it worth an extra $3000 to get a 10 second car? 
Of course the numbers are just arbitrary,  but the concept remains true. 
So,  no, its not a scam, but minor differences in performance are expensive. 

No

Hey guys,

I´m not exactly new to analog, but I´m certainly a new kid on the block here at Audiogon. I would like to thank you all for your posts, this forum has been a valuable source of information (and entertainment) to me for the past couple years. On to the OP question: it is not a scam, but analog takes a lot of effort. We´re hardly talking plug and play stuff here and there´s a lot more into replacing a cart than there´s into replacing a DAC (or a cd-player for that matter). 

You may buy a cart that´s 10 times more expensive and get bad results if your tone-arm is not up to the task of handling the new cart. Things can also go very bad if your phono is not a good match to it. I have a love and hate relationship with analog, but that´s all part of the fun. Of course it is not a scam, much in the same way that power cords are not a scam. I don´t mean to be rude here, but I usually find that those kind of comments mostly come from people who are not willing to (or simply cannot) afford this kind of stuff. 

If everything else is working properly (tonearm and phono) with the new cart, the differences are instantly recognizable and not minimal. They´re quite addictive actually, but careful system matching is crucial and there are so many components in an analog rig that you can easily screw things up by replacing the cart (even for a much more expensive unit).