Went through the same thing with a guy at a star party in Utah who told me my Milky Way shots looked like grape soda. Kind of a harsh way to put it but he wasn't wrong, I had the purple slider cranked to eleven on like three years of photos. Here's the thing though, that ranger's 8 second frame probably looked boring on his phone and great in his memory, and those are two different things. Half the reason people push the core so hard is that a dim gray smudge doesn't sell a print or get a like, and pretending the "real" version is always better feels a little preachy. Less contrast can be a nice change, sure, but acting like it's some big truth about photography is a stretch. It's just a different look, not a moral upgrade.