From the outside, it certainly looks to me like the whole badge thing has become a monster. Something that began as cute, clever — but one-upmanship over the years has taken a toll.

It's a form of swag and one of the reasons for attending.

No, when the point of the badges is to hack and repurpose them, they're arguably _less_ wasteful than a simple paper & plastic badge.

I don't disagree with the joy in producing these kinds of badges, but I do wonder how many people actually do anything with them after the conference, aside from tossing them on a shelf to collect dust for years. Which IMO is genuinely sad! But I suspect that's what happens to the majority of them, even considering the type of person who attends a conference like DEFCON.