I think you are giving people too much credit. Lots of people have a budget they can spend on appliances (like a credit line) and they get the best (most expensive) one they can get on that budget. Others will do the opposite and get the cheapest but only people like you find on Lemmy (Linux users for instance) in my experience will make a choice in the middle based on feature set.

In 10 yrs when those fridges die and people who “learned their lesson” go to buy a new fridge

That's more like two years for Samsung fridges, where the designers and builders spend all of their time on fancy horseshit and ignore basic requirements like "keep the food cold".

I feel like the problem here is that you get people who are curious or like the other features the fridge has and just get what they can when theirs goes out. And while, sure, those people learn not to do that again,

Part of what makes us intelligent is learning from others. I guess I would expect buyers to do even the most basic research on a large dollar figure purchase which would likely expose them to the headlines about Samsung putting ads on fridges after the sale.

Do people actually just walk into an appliance store and just drop more than $1k on what they see on the floor without researching reliability, warranty, or other features from articles and news sources?

That's some fancy active cooling on that computer. Possibly overkill.