You're framing this as an internet problem, which it is not. Before the internet it was called "keeping up with the Jonses" and one can not simply uninstall their environment, whereabouts and reception of social status and class telegraphing from others.
I honestly couldn't care less and consumerism is deeply offensive to me. I often think I belong in a different time, when commercialism and consumerism wasn't such a thing. There was a time not so long ago that people took pride in saving, repairing and making do.
Harsh. I've seen this happen many times and on every occasion it's been taken light-heartedly/no offence/whatever. I think you were incredibly unlucky.
I don't think this is correct. AFAIK they both run in the UI thread (which is why running your timer in a webworker turns out to be more accurate as only the callback is affected by queue length of scheduled calls in the UI thread). Although this article https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling is about sheduling audio specifically, it is the go-to resource for accurate web timing (and although not explicitly mentioned, the metronome is supposed to run in a webworker).
this is where you're failing to understand the frugal mindset. People with a frugal mindset rarely if ever buy more food (if you mean, not make their own meals), no matter their work hours.