Oh, cynicism through consumerism is a very old practice, whether it be sports, companies or even the early games, there wasn't ever really a time where people weren't cynical, mainly just a time when you probably didn't notice it (because people of your age group weren't cynical). Obviously not all people are cynical, but yeah there is a lot of cynicism in the games world and other fields. For example, EA, the big evil corporation that a lot of people hate. Well, I dislike EA and some of it's practices, but some people boycott their games. For example, Battlefield 3, seemed like a game I wanted to get and so I bought it, hoping my friends would buy it and play with me too. But they thought EA was too evil, and boycotted it, even know the game wasn't made by EA but DICE studios, the creators of Mirrors Edge, which is a game they all loved. EA is simply a publisher. So this affected ME cause it meant a lot of the people I would of liked to play with weren't gonna get the game simply because of that aforementioned cynicism.
some of it derives from consumerism I think, the need to have more and more. The more products one consumes means the more competitive one becomes and eventually any product that doesn't match up to the insanely high standards of these individuals is extremely bad, bad enough to become cynical about the product.