Your Wishlist Looks Suspiciously Like Everyone Else’s. Welcome to Borrowed Desires.

You were perfectly happy with your phone until three people bought a newer model. Your water bottle was doing its job until an influencer introduced you to one that apparently makes drinking water a personality trait. And you had absolutely no plans to visit that particular Greek island until your feed became a continuous holiday brochure.

Now you’re researching prices, watching reviews and wondering whether your life can proceed without it.

Welcome to Borrowed Desires: the wants, ambitions and preferences we develop partly by observing what other people value. Sometimes we want something because it meets a genuine need. Sometimes we want it because someone else owns it, admires it, recommends it or appears happier with it.

The distinction matters. A desire can feel intensely personal even when its origins are social. You may believe you’re choosing independently while quietly taking notes from everyone around you.

And no, this doesn’t mean your entire personality is a group project. It means human
desire is more social than we usually admit.

Borrowed Desires: When Someone Else Teaches You What to Want

We don’t arrive in the world with a complete catalogue of desirable phones, careers, holiday destinations, clothes and skincare routines. We learn what is worth wanting through family, friends, culture, advertising and observation. Many Borrowed Desires begin long before we consciously recognise them.

A child may learn that a particular career is prestigious because relatives repeatedly praise it. Someone may become interested in a restaurant after seeing friends visit it. A person who never cared about luxury watches may suddenly notice them after joining a social circle where they signal success.

These are examples of Borrowed Desires taking shape through exposure and social learning.

The desire isn’t necessarily dishonest. You might genuinely enjoy the restaurant, love the watch or discover a career that suits you. Social influence can introduce us to interests we would otherwise never encounter. The question is not whether other people influenced you. They almost certainly did. The more interesting question is how much of the desire belongs to your own needs and values.

Mimetic Desire: Why Their Wanting Makes You Want It

The French thinker René Girard proposed the idea of mimetic desire: we often learn what to desire by observing what other people desire. Rather than wanting an object in isolation, we may want it because another person has made it appear valuable.

Imagine that a new café opens. You have no particular interest in it until your friends start discussing it, posting photographs and arranging visits. Suddenly, getting a table feels important. The coffee hasn’t changed. Its social meaning has.

The same pattern can apply to gadgets, fashion, careers and travel. Someone else’s enthusiasm can become a signal that an object is worth pursuing. Their ownership may make it appear more desirable; their admiration may make it seem more exclusive. This is one way Borrowed Desires develop: another person’s interest becomes the reference point through which we begin assigning value to something we previously overlooked.

Girard’s framework is a theoretical account of how desire can be imitative, not a universal experimental law explaining every human preference. Still, it offers a useful lens: sometimes the person we admire becomes part of what we are actually pursuing. We don’t just want their camera. We want the creativity, freedom or interesting life we imagine comes with it.

And occasionally, we want the camera because everyone in the group has one. Excellent. The group has successfully developed a shared financial commitment.

Social Comparison: When Their Life Becomes Your Shortcoming

In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger proposed social comparison theory, suggesting that people evaluate their opinions and abilities partly by comparing themselves with others. When objective standards are unclear, other people can become reference points.

This can extend beyond abilities into lifestyle and achievement. Someone else’s promotion may make your own job feel inadequate. A friend’s beautifully decorated apartment may suddenly reveal everything supposedly wrong with yours. A colleague’s holiday photographs may turn an ordinary weekend into evidence that you are not living enough. In this environment, Borrowed Desires can emerge almost unnoticed, as someone else’s lifestyle gradually becomes the standard against which we judge our own.

This is often called upward social comparison: comparing ourselves with people who appear better off in a particular area.

Such comparisons can motivate us. Seeing someone learn a language might inspire us to try. Watching a friend build a business may make entrepreneurship feel possible. But comparison can also transform another person’s achievement into a personal deficiency. This is how Borrowed Desires turn someone else’s milestones into our own targets.

That is where Borrowed Desires become particularly persuasive. You may not have wanted a luxury holiday until someone else’s photographs made your own routine feel disappointingly ordinary. The experience itself might appeal to you, but so might the feeling of being the person who gets to have it.

Inspiration says, “That looks interesting; perhaps I’d enjoy it.” Dissatisfaction says, “Why don’t I have that?”

The difference can be surprisingly small.

Social Media: The Desire Manufacturing Department

Social media doesn’t invent every desire, but it gives social influence an enormous distribution network.

A feed can show you the same skincare product, minimalist wardrobe, productivity routine or travel destination repeatedly. Familiarity can make these things feel more normal and desirable. When enough people appear to value something, we may begin to treat it as a standard rather than a preference. Repeated exposure makes Borrowed Desires particularly difficult to recognise because a preference can begin to feel personal simply through familiarity.

Influencer culture adds another layer. A product is rarely presented as just a product. It becomes part of a lifestyle: the organised morning, the confident appearance, the beautiful home, the effortlessly adventurous person.

Advertising has long connected products with status, belonging and identity. Influencer marketing can make those associations feel more personal because recommendations arrive through people audiences follow and may trust. A 2025 meta-analysis of influencer research, covering 135 experimental studies, found that influencers can affect consumer engagement and purchase intention, with credibility and attractiveness among the mechanisms involved.

Platforms also use recommendation systems, echo chambers and filter bubbles that shape what appears in front of us. Repeated exposure can influence what we notice and what seems popular. That does not mean an algorithm can reach into your brain and install a desire. It can, however, keep presenting certain lifestyles until they become familiar reference points.

Your feed may not know what you want. But it can keep showing you what other people are paid to make look desirable.

Identity Consumption: Buying the Person You Want to Become

Sometimes we purchase things for their practical use. Sometimes we purchase what they symbolise.

A shelf full of books can represent intellectual curiosity. A new pair of running shoes can stand for a more disciplined version of ourselves. A luxury bag may communicate status; a camera may represent an imagined creative life. Even a suitcase can become a declaration that we are about to become adventurous.

This is symbolic consumption: using possessions and experiences to express or construct identity. Consumer psychology recognises that products can carry meanings beyond their functional features. They can help people communicate who they are, which groups they identify with and who they hope to become. Borrowed Desires often operate at this level of identity, where what we purchase reflects not just what we like but the kind of person we have learned to admire.

There is nothing automatically wrong with that. Objects can support meaningful goals. Buying running shoes may genuinely help you start running. But sometimes the purchase gives us a brief feeling of becoming the person we imagine, without requiring us to do much becoming.

You buy the journal. You are now a person who journals. The first page remains blank for six months, but the aesthetic is thriving.

Borrowed Desires can blur the line between wanting an object and wanting the identity attached to it. The purchase feels like progress, even when the underlying aspiration still needs attention.

The Hedonic Treadmill: Why the New Desire Never Stays New

You finally buy the phone. For a few days, you admire the camera, explore the features and feel extremely pleased with your decision. Then it becomes your phone. You stop noticing it.

This is related to hedonic adaptation: the tendency for emotional responses to positive changes to diminish as those changes become part of everyday life. Adaptation is not identical for everyone or every experience, and meaningful purchases can have lasting value. Still, novelty often fades.

The problem is that the next comparison is already waiting. Someone has a newer phone, a better camera or a more impressive holiday. The object that once represented arrival becomes ordinary, and a new object takes its place.

The cycle can look like this: wanting, acquiring, adapting and wanting again. Social comparison supplies fresh standards; advertising supplies fresh possibilities. The wishlist keeps growing, even when satisfaction struggles to keep up. This is how Borrowed Desires can keep renewing themselves: once one socially influenced goal becomes ordinary, another begins to look like the missing piece.

Not every desire is a trap. But if every achievement quickly becomes the starting point for another comparison, it is worth asking whether you are pursuing enjoyment or chasing a moving finish line.

FOMO, Status and the Fear of Being Left Behind

Some desires are less about ownership and more about belonging.

Fear of missing out, or FoMO, describes the apprehension that others are having rewarding experiences without us. Research by Andrew Przybylski and colleagues linked FoMO with social media engagement and lower satisfaction of psychological needs, mood and life satisfaction.

This helps explain why people may attend events they aren’t interested in, visit destinations they barely know or buy products because they seem essential to a particular group. The underlying desire may be to participate, connect or avoid feeling excluded. In such situations, Borrowed Desires may have less to do with the object or experience itself and more to do with the social acceptance people believe it will bring.

Visible consumption can also communicate status and group membership. Certain brands, restaurants, gadgets and experiences become social signals. They suggest taste, wealth, sophistication or belonging.

Sometimes you don’t want the expensive dinner. You want to be included in the photographs from the expensive dinner. A perfectly understandable distinction, especially when the bill arrives.

Are Your Desires Actually Yours?

The goal isn’t to eliminate social influence. That would be impossible, and frankly rather lonely. Relationships introduce us to music, food, ideas, careers and experiences that can become genuinely meaningful.

Instead, notice when a desire appears and what seems to be feeding it. Before making a purchase or committing to a new ambition, consider a few questions:

• Would I still want this if nobody could see me owning or doing it?
• Did I want it before I started seeing it everywhere?
• Am I interested in the experience itself, or in how it will look to others?
• Would I still value it if it stopped being fashionable?
• Does it connect with my actual needs, interests and values?
• Am I pursuing it because I enjoy it, or because I feel behind?

These questions aren’t a test of authenticity. You don’t need to prove that every preference emerged independently in a sealed laboratory. They simply create a little distance between seeing something and deciding you need it.

Borrowed Desires are not automatically meaningless. A friend’s recommendation might lead you to a hobby you love. An influencer might introduce you to a useful product. A colleague’s career path might reveal an ambition you had never considered. Influence can expand our lives as easily as it can narrow them.

The point is to recognise the difference between discovering something you value and adopting something because everyone else seems to value it.

Perhaps your wishlist is not a perfect record of your personality. Perhaps it is also a record of the people, images and lifestyles that have caught your attention.

So, the next time you find yourself urgently wanting a product you had never heard of last Tuesday, pause for a moment. Do you want the thing, the identity attached to it, or the feeling of not being the only person without it?

Because sometimes the most revealing item on your wishlist isn’t what you want.

It’s who taught you to want it.