As I posted a few weeks back, a lot of that is deliberately driven by corporations where they push to have brand loyalty be considered a religious creed.
I'm not religious at all, but I fully agree the decline of religion in society is one of the worst things for society. Think of it, reading the Bible and going to church is free. There's dozens of translation of the Bible on the internet, the Gideons put them in every hotel room, and churches love visitors and often give them free barbecue/whatever after the service. But consooming burns a hole in your pocket. You have to pay for religion which used to be free (or "free to play", most religious people tithe or give to religious charities). Corporations do charity too, but it's pretty shit compared to what most religions do.
The only religions that make you do this is shit like Scientology or other dumb cults that make you buy their books and stupid "seminars". Shame on corporations for exploiting people's need for religious belonging for personal gain. What's even worse is when this corporation worship fuses with today's political religion, so celebrities and late-night comedians become both preachers and the source of political opinions which are treated as religious tenets.
Organized religion really isn’t all that much different from corporate consoomerism. Like, the Church selling microtransactions to forgive your sins is a thing that literally happened at some point.
IMO, religion and spiritualism should be practiced on a familial or community level. Anything larger and it will inevitably develop into a system for exploitation. My stance on religion is very similar to my stance on consoomers. You should strive to give back to your community and not be a dick to those who don’t deserve it not because you think it’ll guarantee you a place in heaven, but because it’s what you genuinely believe is the right thing to do.
E: Just thought of another kind of consoomer that I don't recall being brought up yet:
audiophiles. While we could sit here and debate the merits of $600 headphones and whether or not you can even tell the difference (hint: you can't, the price-to-quality curve flattens at around $300 and will give serious diminishing returns beyond that that no normal person will even notice) we're talking about people who spend likely tens of thousands of dollars buying dozens of pairs of $500-$1500 headphones, plus thousands of dollars on other audio equipment like amps and DAC's, just to listen to "reference tracks" for the purpose of (theoretically) appreciating the
audio quality instead of enjoying the music itself. Tens of thousands of dollars for dozens of pairs of headphones, all for a difference in quality so poorly quantifiable that it might as well be a placebo effect. And if you thought a $1000 pair of headphones would at least be sturdy and well-built? Think again, a lot of these "high end" companies are notorious for their shoddy build quality, poor QC and terrible customer service which people are willing to put up with because muh audio quality.
Last I checked, there was a huge influx of cheap (<$30), well-built, and great-sounding in-ears coming out of Chinese audio companies that were giving the big name brands a run for their money, offering maybe 98% of the audio quality (e.g. good enough for anyone without superhuman hearing) at less than 10% of the cost.
Unfortunately I don't have any specific persons of interest to point at, but the /r/Audiophiles Reddit and the Head-fi forums (which are notorious for being a massive circlejerk around their golden-child favorite brands and fertile ground for shills and snake-oil salesmen) are certainly a good place to start digging, for anyone interested in the subject.