Recently, everyone has been talking about "sandwich" and "arbitrage" as if it's just like picking up money, saying that basically, clicking on something on the chain might just be helping others gather transaction fees.

What you see are the opportunities in the candlestick charts, but what others see is that your order is shining in the mempool: once slippage kicks in, with two edges on either side, that remaining spread isn't enough to comfort yourself with "I'm just making a trade."

What's even more amusing is that these days, people are complaining again about miner/validator income, MEV, and whether the ordering is fair... I don't have any profound insights, but my feeling is: before the rules change, retail investors get more anxious and seem to have a built-in loudspeaker.
Anyway, I now prefer to do less activity, or just grind in places with deeper liquidity, rather than being a "hot order" in a crowded pool.
I'm going to get to work.