You control the hardware you are provisioned and the software you run on it, which is enough for me. Unless you’re looking for a job in the server adminstration/maintenance field the physical hardware access component of it matters less IMO

Selfhosting is the act of hosting applications on “hardware you control”. That could be rented or owned, its the same to us. You could go out and buy a server to host your applications but there a few issues that you might run into that could prevent you from simply standing up a server rack in your spare room. From shitty ISPs to lack of hardware knowledge there are plenty of reasons to just rent a VPS. Either way youre one of us :)