Letting the Big Guys Win

There have been so many complaints about how large enterprises and franchises have taken over the shoppers world that it is worth seeing how everybody, either wittingly or not, colludes in their success.

I love supermarkets. Shopping to me is work and having a friendly local shopkeeper who knows all my personal business is just another inconvenience. As a result, I almost never go into small shops and the one that used be near here is now closed. One place insisted on vetting my credit card to the point that I never darkened the door again and it closed for a very long time. If I am ever compelled to go there I now bring cash, but I avoid it too most of the time. Butchers who over price their meat have also been cut from my list of contacts. I'm willing to risk whatever my local supermarkets have to offer rather than be taken for a charlie.

However, when it comes to the Internet, I find that I have more fidelity to the sites I visit than I would have expected a few years ago. Once some of them got too big, were hacked or were taken over by people who liked fighting, I left. But now I'm faced with the opposite problem. My favourite chat room has shrunk to two posts a day and the large social networks are where everybody gathers. I am less favourable towards a shift to exposing all my thoughts on the international stage that they represent because they are not particularly local enough for my limited Internet activity.

Modern times yet again...

Anouilh

Generating an online identity takes time and energy. When a "nom de plume" was requested on chat rooms years ago, I opted for a persona that would cause a bit of discussion. Jean Anouilh was my favourite writer for several years during my teens. His ascerbic wit, shot through with a fey romanticism was just right for the time and, while he is less visible nowadays, his quotes appear regularly on many sites. The pronunciation and spelling of the name, however, led to some humourous interchanges...