something clicked for me just recently. i was reading The One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse and this one passage stood out:
We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.
so idk about you, but i have not recognized myself in any such thing. it occurred to me at the time that maybe things were just different in 1964, or that he means this specifically in the way people identify status or personality with their objects.
but then i thought about fandom. specifically the kind of fandom that makes you find a piece of yourself in a corporate-produced piece of art, truly commodified art that is mainly understood by number sold and budget and revenue and profit. fandom that lets you find community and identity within this commodity, and then encourages you to defend that commodity against all legitimate criticism.
recent events made me really get what this could look like.