I hate buying from Amazon and avoid it as much as I can, but one thing I’ve noticed in the last 5-10 years is that brick and mortar stores seem to have given up completely. It is shocking how many times I’ve wanted to buy something, often very common, from popular brands, and I try and find a local store to buy it from only for that store to be out of stock or just not stock it at all. It feels to me like these stores are filled with “stuff” but none of the things I want to buy.

On the one hand, I loathe feeling that way sometimes. On the other hand, for the better part of the past decade+ any criticism I had about Amazon was met with victim blaming white knight replies and basically no support. At best I'm probably more on the ambivalent side of things than the no sympathy side, not that there's effectively much difference.