I think it's important to not confuse elitism with being objectively right.
I appreciate and agree with the op statement, mostly, but it's also true that enthusiasts will often have very solid advice, based on experience, to pass onto newbies, which can be interpreted as elitism.
Don't skimp on psu in your first build. Elitism? No. And you actually save money by not needing to buy a new psu every few years.
Telling someone to change their build, spending more money on actual performance and less on things like fancy cpu aios with pretty rgb fans that perform the same or worse than high end air that's cheaper and more reliable isn't elitism, its just common sense.
Telling someone to either get a proper maintainable and actually better performing custom loop or just stick with air, instead of wasting money on an aio isn't elitism, it's backed by logic.
In the end we're all just monkeys who like to believe we're always right, and manufacturers and marketing dept. know that. However there are some monkeys that have more experience banging rocks together than others, and dismissing constructive criticism as elitism in a let's give everyone participation awards manner can be counter productive.