He gets to let us know he REALLY cares about photography.

Photography is ultimately subjective anyway, if he feels a 10k camera worth it that's cool.

IMO if your new wait for a sale or buy someone else's failed ambitions off eBay. I'm no pro but plenty of very capable cameras can be had under 1000$. The lenses are the expensive parts

If what you are looking for is image quality (especially when considering quality per pound spent) Leica is not where you should be looking. However, they fill a very unique niche: small(-ish) and light(-ish), full-frame sensor, and operation that is nearly identical to a film rangefinder. What does this mean? It means that you can have a system where you shoot the same lenses, filters, etc. on both digital and film bodies and the cameras and lenses will behave the same way. This, in addition to me subjectively liking the way that rangefinders operate, is why I have a digital Leica. Although I unashamedly shoot Voigtländer and Zeiss film bodies (both made by Cosina in Japan) as they are compatible and come at a fraction of the cost of a film Leica. Before I head out, I ask myself: "Do I feel like film or digital today?" and then I pick the body, my favourite 50mm lens (because to me, that lens is so important that it dictates the rest of my system), and off I go.

You are correct that mirrorless cameras in many ways is where "the game" is right now, but do not make the mistake to counter the foolish Leica elitism with an equally foolish elitism of your own. As a photographer your aim should be to have a setup that works for you, to realise your vision, and while my setup works for me and my digital/film setup, I readily recommend others that do not care about film to explore the mirrorless Fujifilm X-series as they are fun to shoot and price effective. If you want to explore film, the sensible thing is to just pick up an old point-and-shoot or SLR before you invest into a costly system as maybe you will not like film in the end?

As for the "Leica fashion" market, I am actually kind of thankful for it as a Leica shooter because it fills up the second-hand market so that I can get two or three generations old digital Leica cameras at less insane prices. Although what I really wish for is a cheaper competitor to Leica with a full-frame, M-mount, digital alternative so that I could dump Leica and still have my system work. For example, the Epson R-D1 from 2004 had better ergonomics than any digital Leica until the M10 was released in 2017, but 6.1 megapixels and a sensor that becomes borderline unusable over ISO 400 is sadly not viable unless you are going for some sort of retro-digital look. So, the "sane" digital Leica choice these days is likely a used M10 or maybe M10-R (or a Typ 240 if you are "poor", like me) and the M11 largely looks like a lot of money for next to no benefit (but I am thankful that it exists and drives down the prices of the digital Leicas I want to shoot).