This is interesting, do you think people do this because the people they see in Desperate Housewives and the examples in the parent comment have a sort of "clearly defined" identity and people watching this media look at how explicitly defined these characters are portrayed and contrast it against their own sense of self, find it lacking (either because it is, because they imagine it to be, or because something like that is inherently truly difficult to pin down because in reality "bright line" definitions of character don't exist?) and then start to model their life on what they see because it gives them something concrete to centre themselves on?
That's a lot for one sentence. I think the people I know/knew whom are like that are doing it out of boredom mostly. Their lives are fairly comfortable, they have never really seen hunger nor war nor diseases. Most of their lives have been really nice. As such, to give meaning to those lives, they need strife, and the path that the media/gestalt provides is a 'safe' one to introduce struggle, so to speak. They tend to be somewhat religious as well. Having been to those congregations, the pastors/priests/padres stress that you have to really confess your sins a lot, because we all have a lot of sins, so struggle that way. Turns out, almost none of the flock has anything to confess, but 'sin' is at least something to struggle against. There is also an out-sized (though still very small) anti-vax/flat-earther/conspiracy element too, as that also provides some meaning to their otherwise safe and comfortable lives.
In essence, those that get their 'plan' from the TV/gestalt just need to volunteer more and travel.
