Do you make 100% of your decisions based on what is the most efficient/utilitarian, or are there some inefficient things you do just because you enjoy them?
Some common examples are buying a brand new car, using loose-leaf tea, buying wine that costs more than $8[1], eating at a restaurant that isn't the cheapest around, etc.
People do lots of "irrational" things for emotional reasons, and there's evidence that doing something the "hard" (in some cases inefficient) way makes the end result objectively more pleasurable.
I wouldn't really make the judgement of "hipster doofus." But surely the author gets some kind of kick out of using retro tech. I don't find anything wrong with that at all but I would at least have admitted that I like the old gear partially for the novelty.
I've got old PDAs laying around and when you use them, it can be maddening how slow they are compared to our current expectations. But they do often have some interesting feature that is missing on our modern smartphones. It's fun to play around with them, but when it's time to get to work I put them away.
