Mine is that the early 2000s fad of being “half-something” in fantasy fiction, usually to get the cool powers but have less or none of the drawbacks, was symptomatic of the salad-bar-like purchasing of identity markers that Francis Fukuyama claimed that people worldwide would happily purchase and mix and match in his “end of history” that ostensibly was to reign over us forevermore. The fad seemed to fade around the time the “end of history” facade crumbled and history clearly began marching on.

I got nothing like evidence to back that up, but having experienced the time, and having argued with dozens of people in fiction and tabletop roleplaying and even LARPing circles about their “half vampire that has no real vampire downsides but all the cool vampire stuff” or their “half demon half angel half dragon half vampire” template stacks in 3.X D&D and so on and so on. Even so-called “Grey” Jedi in the Star Wars Fandom come to mind with the desire to have Dark Side powers but avoid drawbacks and negative labeling (the Jedi Order were space cops that kidnapped and indoctrinated children for a colonial power but that’s another issue entirely).

The template stackers, both in freeform storytelling and in dice-driven games, had similar goals to neoliberalism: get ahead, pick up appealing labels, dodge unappealing labels, escape liability, win win win win.

I’m not saying that those people were willing or even knowing ideological adherents to neoliberalism’s victory lap, but that the fad of picking as many identity markers as possible in a superficial power-seeking way was like a microcosm of larger societal issues of alienation, isolation, and ultimately unexamined dissatisfaction with worsening material conditions all around us.

A much more recent symptomatic example I can think of regarding a similar phenomenon is cryptocurrency believers thinking they can out-grift the grifts of conventional capitalism and leave all the “wagecucks” behind by holding onto the correct grifting token. Like the above example, it’s a fantasy (if a more expensive one with more living consequences) of being powerful in a world that drains us of our power and gives it to the already powerful.

Like I said, weird take, but I do believe it even if I lack proof and can’t be bothered to do a dissertation on the topic.