You may be being unrealistic about the role of spontaneous personal choice in this.
To a surprising extent, people find things pleasurable because they're told to find them pleasurable.
No one sane would inhale burning carcinogenic leaves to damage their own health, but people do - because they're encouraged to.
People buy new phones because they're somehow "cool". No one is really sure why, but it's something that happens.
There used to be an element of spontaneous creativity in trends. Traditionally industry noted the trends and sold them back to customers.
But it's easier and cheaper to skip the organic and spontaneous part and sell trends top-down by linking them to perceptions of social status.
This is done by key players inside the relevant industries instead of by a Politburo of fat elderly men. But it's still heavily bureaucratic and centralised. Just in a cool way.
It also creates economies of scale, which is both convenient and useful.
Certainly advertising makes people want to start smoking or maybe continue. But people smoke because it gives them a high from the nicotine. Why do you think people were smoking in 1700? Because the nicotine made them feel relaxed, good and they became addicted.
> No one sane would inhale burning carcinogenic leaves to damage their own health, but people do - because they're encouraged to.
That's a bit naive. The carcinogenic leaves have mental effects, a buzz, pleasurable even before and despite addiction and carcinogenic qualities.
New phones have new features, speed and sizes / resolution.
None of these things are free of influence, peer pressure, advertising, and 'needing to feel in' the group. Sure. But to remove personal choice too strongly is a False way to look at the world. But this - this, call it systemic, way to look at the world - is popular and trending - ironically.
To a surprising extent, people find things pleasurable because they're told to find them pleasurable.
No one sane would inhale burning carcinogenic leaves to damage their own health, but people do - because they're encouraged to.
People buy new phones because they're somehow "cool". No one is really sure why, but it's something that happens.
There used to be an element of spontaneous creativity in trends. Traditionally industry noted the trends and sold them back to customers.
But it's easier and cheaper to skip the organic and spontaneous part and sell trends top-down by linking them to perceptions of social status.
This is done by key players inside the relevant industries instead of by a Politburo of fat elderly men. But it's still heavily bureaucratic and centralised. Just in a cool way.
It also creates economies of scale, which is both convenient and useful.