Because iPhone/AirPods are a wealth and fashion signifier. IKEA is a flat-pack THX-1138.

Fight Club summarised it beautifully two decades ago:

“- Like so many others, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.

Narrator: Uh, yes. I’d like to order the Erica Pekkary dust ruffles.

Operator: Please hold.

- If I saw something clever like a little coffee table in the shape of a yin-yang, I had to have it. The Klipske personal office unit, the Hovetrekke home exer-bike, or the Johannshamn sofa with the Strinne green stripe pattern. Even the Rizlampa wire lamps of environmentally friendly unbleached paper. I’d flip through catalogs and wonder: What kind of dining set defines me as a person? I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections. Proof that they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of…

Operator: Please hold.

Narrator: Wherever. I was holding.

- We used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow collection.”