For most of human history, people have lived in small, local information bubbles which were hard to penetrate with facts from the outside world. We see this manifest as the pre-industrial global patchwork of weird and wonderful religious/spiritual/cultural variety. Then somehow the world started to join up and information began to seep into local cultures and sweep away a lot of these pre-rational beliefs. And for a…
In the last ten years there has been a significant change in mainstream content from information (what) to personalities (who). A major driver has been the adoption of social media by the mainstream: Uncle Bob pawing his cell phone while on the toilet. Both closed circle SM (checking on your friends and acquaintances) and public facing SM (checking the influencers) have created a whole new, uncontrolled feeding groun…
And for what it's worth, what is considered "luxury" has become more and more accessible/affordable or is not a status symbol any more: 7-series BMW models can be leased for ~800€ a month, luxury watches have fallen out of fashion, expensive clothing items can be rented or you just go for the trend of "fast fashion", even extremely expensive cell phones like Samsung's Galaxy Fold series can be had with a contract for under 100€ a month.
And if you're just looking for something to prop up your Instagram profile, everything you need sans cosmetic products can be rented for cheap - no need to actually buy all that stuff.