And yet, on the other hand, my spontaneous modification into someone who wears a leather vest given any reasonable opportunity was a somewhat predictable but ultimately unintended side effect of my recent Awesome Leather Vest purchase - I really had planned on it being just a component of one or two special-event outfits. In this case it was a known risk and not a problematic one, but if I hadn't thought that all the way through and leather vests of the type I acquired had more problematic social-signaling properties, it could indeed have been a problem - this is actually a component of why I haven't gotten a cloak, and also I could make an argument on that basis that I shouldn't've gotten a cane when I injured my knee a year ago, since I wasn't intending on modifying into a full-time cane-user and that somewhat-predictably happened anyway and has had repercussions. (I don't mind 'em on net, from here, but being visibly disabled has taken some adjusting to, and peoples' behavior on that count still grates a bit sometimes, and I really should have put a bit more thought into that ahead of time, ideally. OTOH, canes: kinda awesome.)

Not all 'self'-modifications are voluntary. Sunk-cost-based modifications are a subset of the ones that aren't. Being wary of the involuntary ones is not necessarily unwise.