Great post Jim, there is a lot of truth in the author's observations, but honestly, I don't feel I fit in there very well.

I don't really think much at all about what others are carrying and never about rather my gear is better and more impressive, or that I'm smarter or they're stupider because of my or their choices.

I can sure see how the author concluded that gear is very closely related to one's perception of themselves, and his breakdown of those personas feels dead on to me.

As for me, I just want to be out in the forest and be comfortable. I always feel lucky to have the gear to do that, and a place to do that.

Stoves are an interesting item to pick on, and I think you can draw some conclusions about the personas of some of their users. As for me, my exponent extreme stove sits on my shelf. I use a super cat stove now. The reason I use it is because it's too simple to fail, to cheap to care if it gets stepped on, and lighter than any other stove I know of that performs as well. I'm well aware that there is close to zero "wow" factor with that stove. I've used it enough to know.

I showed both of my stove to my neighbor the other day. First I showed him the super cat stove and told him it's what I use. He looked very disappointed and told me about our buddies stove (an old svea stove). We talked a bit more and he told about a stove at the Coleman store here so I broke out my exponent extreme stove and lit it up for him. "Wow! Now that's a stove!"

Yeah, you can smelt ore with it, that's for sure...