Why do you buy so many tutorials?

I am a glutton for other people's tutorials.  Recently there was a forum post in which a person was showing off a build of a design they had purchased and in the comments another person was asking specifics and actively trying to reverse engineer it.

I don't mean to point this person out as wrong or "bad" in any way, copying designs that you like is probably one of best things you can do to improve your skills, I'm capable of doing it myself.   We're all trying learn to be better artists. There are some gray and black areas that should be very obvious and I won't go into them. But aside from any of that and in my opinion -- you are really doing yourself a disservice by doing that.


Here are my reasons:

1.  I equate learning balloon techniques to taking guitar lessons.   I could noodle on my guitar for 8 hours and probably come up with what my teacher would have shown me in the 30 minutes.  Or I could spend those extra 7.5 hours practicing and improving on what I was taught.

2.  These designers have put a lot of effort into figuring out not only how to build, but usually have modified it for efficiency as well.  You're not being shown a general design, you're given the optimized version.

3.  Additional twister tips and techniques are shown along the way.  Watching someone create something, hearing the patter, getting that extra little tip as to why something was done a certain way, priceless.

4.  Most of the time we're talking about things that cost less than the price of a sandwich.