This is not new with hyper-individualism, look at wallstreet narcissists like in the 80’s. America was and still is ran by narcissistic psychopaths because of capitalism, this is why so many CEO have narcissist traits. There was never really a “collective era” other then after 9/11 but again it was only collective because of their hate for Muslims. Even during America’s “golden age” (the 90’s so post Soviet collapse but pre-9/11) you had anti-capitalist media such as fight club, the matrix, American psycho, nirvana, metal, and more criticizing what people thought as the “American Dream”. But there was never a dream, you were either a white wage slave or a white bourgeoisie narcissist. But the main thing these two had in common is that they were both rotting their lives away on consumerism
And on what you said about varying interests, this is just consumerism. People are as you could say consumerized, they are so consumerized that they believe the only way to be different is to consume different material. And this is a whole thing about consumerism even things criticizing consumerism get consumerized.
The American religion isn’t catholicism, judaism, or anything of the sorts.
It was Economic Salvation through the exploitation of others