It's striking that although there's a lack of meaningful identities to adopt, the number of shallow identities to choose from is mushrooming. Pursuits that used to be "interests" or "hobbies" (gaming, fandoms, sexual preferences) are converting into identities. What's concerning is that people will aggressively defend identities and turn them into causes, not something we need more of right now.
40 years ago if you fetishised having it off with a toaster and told your mates they made fun of you and/or you got help. Today you tel your mates; they make fun of you, you double down, find the toaster fu*er community online, feel vindicated in your newfound sense of meaning, purpose and belonging and get about defiling kitchen implements
Algorithms that serve you the "most engaging" related content pushes a lot of people to extremes.
Oh you want to eat a little less meat do you? How about you FAST for 18 hours a day and go mega-VEGAN? Oh you want to read an article about Politics? How about you now watch this very well produced documentary on how the government is run by aliens.
I would have at least 10 dollars
It’s a symptom of the lack of meaningful identities for people to adopt, and the social media push toward outlier-ism (nobody follows a boring father of 2 with a reliable job and a stable marriage) - so they choose trivial things like crypto or wokeness or Q to identify with and be extreme about.