We have Barbers shops and magazine stands ("same as" you'll say, I'm certain) with HiFi mag's extolling the virtues and benefits of products much like 1.5m phono leads selling in the region of $1500.
Ok, they're impedance matched, colour matched, made from the latest material including/excluding (delete where applicable) some rare earth element that's either in or out of vogue at the time of manufacture.

What I can't believe is that even a single digit proportion of their readership would allocate that kind of money to such a specific part of their HiFi setup. At the same time I'd attribute an even smaller number against those who really could tell the difference anyway.

My guess is a lot of these technologogy trends are merely an attempt at built-in obscalescence under a different guise.