Sometimes I feel like the internet is reliving in a 30 year span what retail went through over a whole century. General stores and small specialized shops serving a limited number of clients, same as when you could put on a website to sell to the world the birdhouses you made as a hobby. Then came shopping malls and Walmarts and everybody went oh my god this is so cool, everything in one place. The same enthusiasm we felt over Facebook, Google, amazon. And now, seeing how the big players all sell cheap stuff, control the market and kill all competition, we look back at a time when there were more options, more freedom, and choose to use Lemmy instead of Reddit, and buy our coffee at the local roaster rather than Starbucks.