To sum up, we are conspicuous consumers in more varied and subtle ways than most of us realize. Advertisers understand this part of human nature and use it to their advantage. But ads aren’t necessarily preying on our irrational emotions, brainwashing us into buying things that aren’t useful to us. Instead, by creating associations that exist out in the broader culture—not just in our own heads, but in the heads of third parties—ads turn products into a vocabulary that we use to express ourselves and signal our good traits.
