I believe that what you describe coincides with the shift from an analog world to a digital one. In the analog, we defined ourselves by material objects. The type of car we drove for example. The mechanical difference between a Ford and Chevy was not significant to the average buyer. But the status difference did matter. In the Southern US, where I grew up, the manufacturer of the car you bought often had to do with which NASCAR racer you followed. The shift to the digital was one from the material to the immaterial. Status is now derived from the ideology of products. So that driving an Electric Vehicle acquires a new more global status of importance because it confirms to our Social Media contacts a status of believing in the social ideologies of climate change. The end result is that it has made it easier to be manipulated. No longer am I comparing myself to my next door neighbor but to some image of a person on social media. It is tyrannical because as Max Fisher has shown in his book The Chaos Machine, the digital world is ordered for our control. https://youtube.com/shorts/1QrYZqXrZ_s?si=IRI5MhrNy_eL5F93 And, to begin to resist being confirmed to an ideology, requires a strength of individual character that few people have ever been taught how to acquire.
I've never understood why you should get rid of something, just because something newer came out.
I kept my first bag-phone until smart-phones came out. I kept my first computer until it could no longer keep up with the newest OS's. I kept my car until it could no longer drive. I kept my kitchen appliances until the gave up the ghost. In fact, the only things that I bought every time a new one came out, were books.
I believe that what you describe coincides with the shift from an analog world to a digital one. In the analog, we defined ourselves by material objects. The type of car we drove for example. The mechanical difference between a Ford and Chevy was not significant to the average buyer. But the status difference did matter. In the Southern US, where I grew up, the manufacturer of the car you bought often had to do with which NASCAR racer you followed. The shift to the digital was one from the material to the immaterial. Status is now derived from the ideology of products. So that driving an Electric Vehicle acquires a new more global status of importance because it confirms to our Social Media contacts a status of believing in the social ideologies of climate change. The end result is that it has made it easier to be manipulated. No longer am I comparing myself to my next door neighbor but to some image of a person on social media. It is tyrannical because as Max Fisher has shown in his book The Chaos Machine, the digital world is ordered for our control. https://youtube.com/shorts/1QrYZqXrZ_s?si=IRI5MhrNy_eL5F93 And, to begin to resist being confirmed to an ideology, requires a strength of individual character that few people have ever been taught how to acquire.
I've never understood why you should get rid of something, just because something newer came out.
I kept my first bag-phone until smart-phones came out. I kept my first computer until it could no longer keep up with the newest OS's. I kept my car until it could no longer drive. I kept my kitchen appliances until the gave up the ghost. In fact, the only things that I bought every time a new one came out, were books.
Maybe I'm just an aberration.