I'm with your last paragraph, in a weird way.
I view with disdain the proposition that those who subscribe to "mind-reads" are doing so because they think they are smarter or they want other people to think they're smarter; some people read such magazines because they want to use their brain for something more than, say, Maxim, Glamour, or Hot Rod God.
And no, I do not subscribe to the New Yorker, Scientific American, Glamour, or Maxim. Hot Rod God, however, is a bastion of information about rods, things hot, and the occasional god.