Are many audiophiles only seeking approval of the next purchase?

Visiting audio forums has taught me several things about amateur audiphile opinions. They're aren't usually well informed. They aren't usually well reasoned. And they aren't usually worth too much. 

If somebody has compiled a body of opinions,and they have some technical grasp on what they're hearing, and their opinions are well reasoned, then I'll consider giving them some weight. 

Some people claim, quite mistakenly, that it's reviews and opinions that drive the relentless purchase of more and more audio gear. I think a complete lack of technical understanding does. If you have a clue how components work and you understand how the measurements relate to the listening experience, the guess work is ameliorated greatly. 

Not without it, I guess, so what ? Let the people be. Anyway, man has a right to be an a......, so does a woman.

Takes all sorts is true in audio as anywhere. I enjoy the ideas, the way folks handle problems that crop up, the rants.... Usually the fact of how the post shows the person behind the post.

Now that there are no brick and mortar stores to go into and sit down and hear the gear..well..this is all that people have.

This on line commiseration thing.

Which is also ripe for promotion/inducement of gang/thug behavior.

Part of it is due to only 10% of what we communicate by and though, when in person... only 10% of that direct person to person behaviour is in the on line communications.

Our body and mind looks for the 100% connection and uses that lowly 10% written data to self create the other or missing 90% of the communication data.

What this means is that...more than anywhere else in the world, by a huge margin, almost incalculably so..that our behaviour on line is almost entirely us (our own reflection) and has very little to do with our interactions with others.

To clarify... when we fly off the handle or go down some given road, in our on line interactions, it’s is almost entirely a self enacted/created mirror behaviour and has almost nothing to do with the given other.

This does not explain the seeking approval part but it can be seen as being endemic to the puzzle.

The other side of what teo_audio says is the fact reading all this improves our thinking abilities to sift through all the chaff and find what is important, and what is 'real' vs drivel vs out and out propaganda. It may have been true thirty years ago plenty of folks would have accepted what was written as actual truth. Today, almost no one accepts anything written without plenty of critical inspection. Automatic actually.. It has become the norm.