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That's a completely artificial distinction that falls down under scrutiny.
The only way that your paradgm works is if you impose a puritanical view on what constitutes "productive" work. A lot of Americans do this nearty instinctively. For example, to many men, especially, spending on a bandsaw is not frivolous, but spending on a fashion item is. That strikes me as a particularly a joyless worldview.
Even within this paradigm, there are numerous examples, on this forum alone, of people who have made their obsessions into "productive" careers. So, does this mean that if you can parlay your acquired knowledge into financial gain, the acquired knowledge now has value that it did not previously? We can say the same about people on watch forums, audiophile forums, hell, forums specifically dedicated tp hypebeasting.
There is no reason that acquisition precludes something from being a "productive" interest.
You really think there's an artificial distinction between productive hobbies and frivolous collecting?
Do you really want me to define this distintion for you?
And even if I can't come up with a perfect, 100% infallible distinction - are you really telling me that it doesn't exist?
Yes, I can say that hypebeasting is Not Productive (tm) or whatever term you want to put in there. I'm not going to spend hours coming up with a scientific definition for something we all know to be what it is.
Actually, to go back on my previous point - even something like language learning can be meaningless - see all the "polyglots" on youtube.
As the dude above said, we know when somethings frivolous. I don't care whether you do it or not (I do it too) but it's ridiculous to ascribe this faux meaning to it.