Just lock away your wallet before you go too far. Format-specific forums have a way of making you buy new things!
OH, YES!!!!! ABSOLUTELY AGREE 100%!!!!! All caps on purpose, as yes, this can become an unexpected little trap into which the unwary fall while they are happily participating in a forum about their particular brand of gear..... Actually, though, at least to me GAS doesn't seem to be quite as much of a problem as it was during the glorious, golden days of the ascent of DSLRs...... Then it seemed as though on Usenet groups and eventually website-based forum discussion forums we were all eagerly looking at info and talking about rumors about the next new version of our chosen camera body over fairly short periods of time, and new lenses, too, were coming out at rather a rapid pace. It was indeed all too easy to get caught up in reading about, say a new lens and seeing someone's examples of their use of it and deciding that, oh, yes, one must also have that lens!
In my Nikon days, it really was a heady experience when many of us Nikon folks shifted from the D70 to the D200 and then from there in what seemed a very short period of time to the D300 and, oh, yes, gasp! -- maybe instead or in addition to the D3 for those who had skipped over the D2/D2x/D2xs series.... No doubt about it, we egged each other on, and at times when a few or maybe even many of us were gathered together in person, everyone was looking at and trying out each other's gear and we were all attracted, of course, to the newest camera body or lens that had maybe just arrived in someone's hands.
We also shared information and learned from each other about which tripods worked best for specific situations, which ball heads or gimbal heads, and which systems for getting the camera and lens on the tripod seemed to work most efficiently and effortlessly..... And, yep, that often cost a lot of us even more money as we trekked off to the camera shop in search of our own new tripod/ballhead/gimbal/connecting system.....
The arrival of mirrorless cameras on the horizon, while of course revolutionary and potentially exciting, never seemed to create that same atmosphere of effervescent, bubbling enthusiasm..... That said, though, my first exposure to a mirrorless camera was to a Sony NEX-7 with this weird electronic viewfinder -- and it was right here in my own home when a fellow long-time Nikon shooter friend came over one day and brought along his brand-new NEX-7 to show me. I looked through the EVF and wasn't sure what I was seeing but then realized just how much information beyond the actual scene itself was being relayed to me. WOW!
And, yes, by the end of that visit I was intrigued by the mirrorless concept and the EVF even though I'd hardly really had more than a passing introduction to it. At that point, although Sony was gradually making inroads and drawing more and more people into the whole mirrorless thing, the overall ambience wasn't the same, it wasn't that same intense excitement that we all had felt when DSLRs were coming into their own and we all wanted the latest and greatest bodies and lenses. Nonetheless, I was intrigued enough by that Sony NEX-7 and that weird EVF that I bought myself one and three lenses to use on it.... Enjoyed that camera, loved the lenses, but didn't ever get into any sort of group where either the Sony brand and/or mirrorless camera bodies and lenses were the focus of attention, as I don't think there were a lot of those back then.
So, yes, the point here is that from the beginning all of this enthusiasm and excitement was spread by word-of-mouth (word-of-fingers?) on the internet in Usenet and various discussion forums related to photography, and it has continued on to this day, although from what I can see, not quite to the same near-fever-pitch level that it had reached back in the late 1990's and early days of the 2000's and beyond, during the glory days of the DSLR.
OK, so that said, yes indeed, GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) can still pop up anywhere (not quite as deadly to a person as COVID-19 but probably as deadly to the individual's bank account!) and it has been right here on MR that I've been seized by it unexpectedly when reading about and seeing examples from some lenses -- not even Sony lenses, but rather, Voigtlander ones which come in either native Sony E-Mount or Leica mounts. So, yeah, one does need to be careful about allowing oneself to be captivated by a description of or photos from particular gear.....that GAS will try to grab you every time!
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