Sorry, but your discoveries have all filtered through money. But it's part of being human. We all like to play this game a little, some of us a little too much maybe. It ends shortly after we arrange to have our ashes shot onto Mars, thereby becoming more cool after we're dead. And it runs parallel to economic considerations.
Money is a good way to motivate someone, and it has the advantage of working on complete strangers.
But the peer-group drive was motivating human beings to spot trends tens of thousands of years before money was invented. We should make some throwing spears too. Our vacuous impulse toward fashion and fitting-in is probably a spinoff from a survival instinct. The trust system works for music. Instead I ask friends what they're into.