Humans just want to be feel cool and part of something exclusive. It's dumb to buy digital art receipts for 6-7 figures, its dumber to pay that much and then 5 figures on a yearly basis to play golf.
People with money want their own club though, so something like that will always be around.
Another analogy I use for friends who ask (I have a sizable NFT 'bag'(investment)):
I say why do people buy Rolex watches and Gucci purses? Status. So you can't show off a 'real' Rolex well in the digital world. NFT's are that. Provably scarce. Verifiable.
The luxury industry is massive and people crave to have status and/or 'belong' to something. NFTs are no different and they are not going anywhere. It is early.
It’s membership cards.
Any golf club can host the masters, all you need is some well-maintained grass. but Augusta will always be exclusive to the power brokers of society.
Augusta, like NFT is an exclusionary club only meant for rich people. Both are useless, and probably harmful to society at large, but fulfill a basic human need.
Once again, you can actually play golf there. It's not useless. NFTs are useless. Bad analogy.
1) "I was rich enough to buy a Bored Ape NFT". This is for status relative to people outside the club.
2) "I was rich enough to buy a super-expensive Bored Ape NFT". This is for status within the club, it lets them all know how rich you are.
It's all yuck to me, but people have different motivations.