I guess it turns out scarcity is pretty enjoyable as long as you don't actually need whatever is scarce. Maybe future utopias will also have fake scarcity to keep people entertained

>The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime; a triumph equaled only by its monumental failure.

-The Architect to Neo

>Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your "perfect world". But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.

-Agent Smith to Morpheus

I don't neccessarily think it needs to be suffering, people just want something tangable to work towards. Noone is suffering or miserable without a fortnite skin, but without working towards them the game would be far less fun.

People are in fact suffering for not having Fortnite skins:

https://www.thegamer.com/fortnite-default-insult-kids/

This might even be the point of having scarce skins, if we combine it with the causes for bullying:

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/most-teen-bullying-occurs-among...

I can agree with limitations giving structure to our expression, but the consequences don't end there.

I don't know, Ive spent a bit of time around children. If they don't have a actual reason to bully other kids then they will invent a reason whole cloth. You would have a hard time convincing me that scarcity has anything at all to do with that. If fortnite skins didn't exist it would be freckles, or names, or head shape, or literally something made up. You're second link even says bullying is just climbing the social ladder, I don't think scarcity of being the popular one is solvable unless everyone lives in a personal world full of only ai. Alot of kids and teenagers are honestly just dicks.