As I and many others have said, repeatedly, that basic trust that people have is a large part of what makes a photograph a photograph. I've probably said it in this thread, I dunno.
Painting, digital or otherwise, is a lovely thing. I have no objection to it. But it isn't photography. And photography loses much of what it is, what makes it itself, when trust is lost. If the default reaction anything visually interesting is "nice photoshop work" then we're all painters, whether we like it or not. If you're OK with that, well, great. Have you heard of these "brush" things? I hear they're pretty great too. Me, I'm not a painter.
This is basic stuff, I'm not making it up, I'm not some lone voice in the wilderness screaming crazy rantings. Everyone who bothers to think much about photography and how it fits in to society gets here pretty quickly, and then, often, they say "Oh Dear". Because it's an Oh Dear sort of observation.