Human nature never changes that's why the same patterns are always repeated. Even if a few do change their nature, there are always more newbies that come in with the basic human nature to replace those that did change.
The problem with everyone jumping on the same pattern at the same time is that it tends to stop working. If everyone is looking for IBM to breakout and start buying at the same time they create a self fulling prophecy, and the stock moves up, but when they try and sell, the stock moves down faster then it moved down because there was no real buyers in the stock. So only the few who bought early and sold into the move make money. So you have to adjust, or use the contrarian theory in that case. Patterns come back into play when everyone gives up on them, then the real buyers push them up. In the example I gave, the traders that are selling could potentially create a fake breakdown too, cause since there are no real buyers, the market makersor specialists will let the stock drop under the breakout or bounce off the trendline to get everyone to panic so they can accumulate the stock.
