I'm offended by the price too.
But I'm very old school when it comes to distressing. If you haven't worn it out yourself, you're just posing, as far as I'm concerned. That is probably a prejudice from my teen years, when we sneered at people who bought ripped jeans. We proudly wore the ripped jeans, but we just wore them till they got that way.
It's interesting how they have to rename trends each time they come around. First time it was ripped jeans. Then destroyed jeans. Now it's distressed.
Last year, I saw jeans for sale that were not only distressed but also paint-spattered. Neither effect looked natural. So now people are paying to wear fake old clothes that have seen fake work. At least they weren't expensive, so they didn't hit maximum on my derision metre. But they came close.