[tsimionescu]

Just look at the huge amount of money being invested into advertising, PR, and marketing. That industry is mostly focused on finding psychological tricks to manipulate us into wanting things we just don't need, in various ways.

One of the best known examples is the PR-manufactured tradition of diamonds in engagement rings, which sky-rocketed the demand for diamonds in the general population.

Another great example is the huge industry of "supplements" which is legalized fraud on a massive scale, selling useless pills to people with a promise of making them better in some way, and relying solely on the fact that it's hard to prove that they don't actually do anything since their claims are so vague.

These are prime examples of entirely artificial demand created out of whole cloth through manipulation. There are numerous other cases of more subtle effects, where marketing is significantly inflating a demand which would exist but be much smaller otherwise (toys, smartphone upgrades, new cars every few years, beauty products, fashion etc).