apologies, i forgot devs don't want to talk to normal node runners. i don't want *more* arbitrary data stored on my drive. i don't want *more* avenues for spam or denial of service for normal transactions. at worst we should have options for our mempool and node so we can decide, not be told, how things will be.

That feels unfair, I didn't say I didn't want to talk to you because you were a "normal node runner". I indicated that your answer did not match the topic I asked about. I get that people don't like data in the blockchain—I'm not excited about that either—but I've already heard all about that for the past two weeks. Here, I'm specifically trying to I understand why people argue that OP_RETURN transactions make nodes more expensive to run. I don't get where that is coming from or what the line of thought is.