World News

I'll try to remember to if I can find it. Web searching has indeed become a pain. I tried to do some just now, but didn't have much luck. Through a link in one article, I came upon one source that is vaguely related to what we're talking about, but not really on the point of specifically combining product and community. It's also sort of a shallow summary and may be stuff you've already heard of: https://www.businessinsider.com/birth-of-consumer-culture-2013-2

These quotes from it specifically stand out to me:

"We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture," wrote Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers. "People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs."

Bernays shattered the taboo against women smoking by persuading a group of debutantes to light up at a parade — an event he leaked to the media ahead of time with the phrase "Torches Of Freedom" — thereby linking smoking with challenging male authority.

But, this isn't really the specificity of intent I thought I had found something on before. Maybe I confused someone extrapolating intent from outcomes in the past, or it's just out there in the mass of the internet somewhere and is hard to find.