Definitely the most glaring example of material culture I've experienced was on my class trip to The Bunny Museum last year. My Idea of America class (very randomly) took a field trip to this normal looking house in a normal looking neighborhood that also happens to be the "#1 Best Weird Museum in Los Angeles." Basically it is a house full of bunnies - some real, most fake. There is literally no shelf or closet or tabletop not crammed with stuffed or ceramic or photographed bunnies. It's creepy. Candace Frazee and her husband actually live in this house and then open it for tours on a pretty regular basis. The whole thing started when her husband gave her a bunny figurine for Valentine's Day. And then they made it a tradition to exchange bunny-themed gifts every single day as an expression of their love. A decade or two later they now can proudly claim the Guinness World Record for "owning the most bunny items in the world" - when I visited the number was around 29,000.
Just being inside that house is like inhabiting an extreme microcosm of American materialism. The couple claims that the display is a testament to their love and thus something to celebrate. While that may have some sentimental significance for them, it is also undeniably the paragon of excess. Plus the equation of love and things in of itself strikes me as essentially problematic. And I was also bothered by their choice to turn their house into a museum attraction - why the need to parade the evidence of their love in front of the public? These nagging factors for me undermine their sentimental foundation for their operation. As an outsider to their relationship, I just had trouble processing the museum as anything but disturbing, both viscerally in the moment and afterwards upon reflection.
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