Start with how anything reaches you online. A company makes something, then has to buy its way to your attention — ads, sponsored posts, paid placement, whatever ranks that week. The system barely cares whether the product is any good. It cares who paid the most to be seen. That's expensive for sellers, it gets pricier every year, and most of it lands in front of people who were never going to care.
And you never had a side at all. You don't open Instagram to shop — you open it to see your friends. But between the photos, you're shown brand after brand, each one chosen to benefit the seller, or the platform's cut, and never you. Online, you're not the customer. You're what's being sold.
It's the same broken system from both ends: the good gets buried with the bad, and the only way through is to pay. Nobody is matched on merit — not the products, not the people.