Thoughts
Feature creep turns things that are boring into things that are bad.
For an example, let's say Mark is working as an engineer adding a smart assistant to a microwave. Mark has been effected by the disease of feature creep. (Whether Mark uses his own product, or is passionate about microwaves, or particularly cares about his job doesn't matter.)
When most people see a normal microwave ("base" microwave), they're bored by it. They've seen it before. When Mark sees a base microwave in his friend's house, because he's been effected by feature creep, he thinks "this microwave is bad because it doesn't have a voice assistant."
I'm being very particular with my wording. It's possible that Mark uses and loves his voice assistant microwave. But it's possible he doesn't. It's possible that he would be legitimately inconvenienced by the lack of a voice assistant. But the "feature creep" disease doesn't care about practicality. It effects the way Mark thinks about his friend's microwave, which Mark has never used.
It's not about liking features or missing them. You can be a smart-home enthusiast, of the opinion that all microwaves are best with voice assistants. But if you don't spend all your time around voice assistant microwaves, like Mark does, you can walk into your friend's house, and see a base microwave and not think anything of it.
Feature creep isn't about wanting more features. That's the other point. Mark doesn't want a camera or a TV or a laser projector in his microwave. Feature creep doesn't make you want more features.
Mark isn't dumb. Mark knows that not everyone has a smart microwave. He still calls a base microwave a "normal" microwave. It's not that the goalposts have moved. But a voice assistant microwave is not impressive to Mark anymore. And a base microwave is actively unimpressive.
Like, a golfer who starts passionately playing golf, practicing every day, and getting better, still knows that par is the standard, and knows that they're getting better. The first time they get better than par, they get a certain rush from it. The 100th time they get under par, they still know that they've a good job, but they don't feel the same way.
It's not an addiction either. Addictions cause you to suffer withdrawal or negative effects. Feature creep doesn't have negative mental effects, not really. It's just desensitizing you to existing features.