Guessing by your examples that you are American. Maybe you are aware, or perhaps not, that in Europe many view your culture as the one that has taken this to its extreme. Some envy it, some don’t.

All cities have the exact same shopping street somewhere.

Tokyo (Ginza), NYC (5th), Paris, London, Berlin, Sao Paulo..: Starbucks, Gucci, Addidas, Louis Vuitton, Levis, Ferragamo, Apple Store, a little further from there a McDonald's..

I think a significant contributer to franchize style commoditized homogenization is modern anxiety. Millenials especially seem near exclusively drawn to the 'predictable' and curated 'peer approved' nature of recognizable 'safe' brand signals.

> Starbucks / Chipotle / Orange Theory / Target / Generic Brewery / Lime Scooter / Waymo / Subscribe N Save

I've never been to any one of these except Starbucks but only like a six times and Chitpole ONCE.

I've also never been to Taco Bell. McDonalds I've been to thirty times.

I don't think I'm alone? These places don't have that exaggerated pull that is often discussed in alarmist articles.

I guess I just don't eat outside at all so I could be the minority.

I don’t know if I’d club fast food restaurants into the dopamine factory category. I see it as more of a necessity as I don’t think I can go hunt or gather food during my lunch break at the office.

Yeah, I think cities are probably the clearest physical-world version of this

This is alienation as described by Marx. If you optimize a thing, at some point it becomes separated from its nature.

On the contrary I think they converge for what's inline with the average user, a sort of neutral and familiar "taste" of everything from operations to design.

To nit pick: Micromobility is the opposite of this.

Eh, I don't use Lime Scooters or Waymo for the dopamine, I use them to get to where I need to go.