Part of growing up is realizing that the places where a person eats or shops, what music and entertainment they consume, what clothes they wear - are entirely uncorrelated with their personality and character and worth. And cringing hard at your own past teenage past self who confused such superficial identity markers with personality.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the article's author is only on their first step of this realization.

Of course, one can overgeneralize the correlations between consumption preferences and personality (character is vague and worth practically undefined) but it seems absurd to claim they are entirely uncorrelated. Take the Big Five traits: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, extroversion. Each has numerous obvious implications for consumer preferences. Do you mean something else by "personality" or perhaps "growing up"?

Right, I noped out of this article when I realized it felt like a guy making up a whole population he could do some elevated punching down at to offset some ostensible self deprecation. What a chore.

I'm quite curious what initially instills this juvenile idea in us. I expect it's advertising which actively seeks to foment this nonsense by implying that if you buy this or that you will become this or that.