> In all honesty, tech probably is "digging the grace", so to speak. The blurb I mention from the article goes on to illustrate how an expensive vacation, shared via photo streams and status updates on social media, is probably displacing the "Check out this jewelry I got! U jelly?"-type of conspicuous consumption people used to partake in.

I noticed that you called that out in another comment. Fully agree. Status is never going to disappear, just change forms. Kudos!