How to make sense of it all, asks Joan Westenberg:
For 20 years we built the internet around abundance: more products, more creators, more opinions, more newsletters, more podcasts, more apps, more tools, more marketplaces, more feeds. The founding promise was access: anything, from anyone, anywhere, instantly. No gatekeepers, no scarcity, no permission. The shelf went infinite.
For a while that felt like freedom. And then it turned into drudgery. Every ordinary decision now comes with a research burden […] The modern consumer has become a part-time procurement department.
People are tired of sorting. Tired of comparison, fake reviews, infinite tabs, marketplaces that play like casinos, creators who recommend everything, software that needs a consultant to explain its pricing page, experts with hidden incentives, brands that treat their attention as something to strip-mine.