Back to basics (burgers)

There is something about burgers which I clearly do not get. I haven't had a burger in years, and now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm missing something. Burgers are being turned into haute-cuisine - the labour intensive, cost-insensitive brainchild of high-powered chefs all over the world. When J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats recently wrote about the strangest burger of his life, he stated "What emerged from the kitchen had me struggling to hold back fits of laughter. Was it art? Was it cuisine? Was it comedy? Was it interactive kinetic sculpture? I'd say yes to all of these, so much so that how it actually tasted was largely beside the point (it wasn't particularly good)."
I don't know any other people other than foodies (and children) that eat high-priced food they don't like for sake of experience. I'm of an inquisitive mind (and only just out of childhood, according to some) so I'm now scouting around to find out why the humble burger is sparking such interest. I found some clues when reading about Heston Blumenthal's "Blumenburger", which sports some interesting stats, to say the least:

Number of ingredients to make a cheeseburger: 3 (meat, cheese, bun)
Number of ingredients to make a Blumenburger: 32
Cost of average homemade half-pound cheeseburger: $3
Cost of Blumenburger: $9
Time required to make average cheeseburger: 7 minutes (3 minutes of prep, 4 minutes cooking time)
Time required to make Blumenburger: 30 hours, 4 minutes (30 hours of prep, 4 minutes cooking time)

So, burgers are cheap, simple and quick to make. No biggie. Everybody knows a burger. But do you know what a "slider" is? No? Then how about a "Guberburger"? No? What about a "Maid-Rite"? Or the fabulously named "Slug burgers", which have nothing to do with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? Turns out it's not just chefs that are fiddling the ol' recipes. If you're not put off, I suggest you vamoose over to Serious Eats and check out the list of burgers you had no idea existed. Having browsed all the fascinating combinations, I'm still wondering if this is a good thing. To me, it just seems like so much meat. I guess that answers the question of where all animals from Ol' McDonald's farm went...

(image from google.com)