That’s surely one reason. Another would be collecting data to create profiles to make advertising and political manipulation even more effective.

It’s probably not the most poetic, but I like it:

Luftschloss

It literally means „air castle“. It’s a castle made entirely out of air. It looks stunning and grand in your imagination or when you talk about it, but it’s not real.

It’s like having a dream or a vision that sounds great but is completely unrealistic or impossible to achieve.

In English, you might say „pipe dream“ or „castle in the air“, but „Luftschloss“ sounds way more poetic and fragile, evoking something beautiful yet intangible.

There’s another one which is similar, but not the same:

Hirngespinst

The literal transition would be a delicate web spun by your mind. In Englisch you’d probably also say „pipe dream“, but there’s a subtle difference between „Luftschloss“ and „Hirngespinst“.

„Hirngespinst“ is more like an absurd or even silly idea you came up with. By contrast, a „Luftschloss“ tends to describe a beautiful but unrealistic vision with a broader, often more hopeful scope.

I’m not even sure if this is relevant. What is relevant though: we are all burned out and instead of asking who’s the most burned out we should probably fight the cause, because that’s the same for all generations: capitalism