The chameleon responding to its own shifting image is an apt analog of the human world of fashion. Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind to its own reflection?

In a 21st-century society wired into instantaneous networks, marketing is the mirror; the collective consumer is the chameleon. What color is the consumer when you put him on the marketplace? Does he dip to the state of the lowest common denominator—a middle average consumer? Or does he oscillate in mad swings of forever trying to catch up with his own moving reflection?