i did this a few years ago, but i should update it: "What have you used Lightning to buy?". My answer is now: "drinks at bars/events, food (dinner) including sharing the bill with other people, hotel rooms, flights, cellphone bills (both the normal type and esims), electricity bills, water bills, internet bills, taxis, takeaways, groceries (last 3 via gift cards) VPS, VPN, charity donations, trades with friends (usually for USD cash), topping up a debit card, payment for nostr relays, zaps on nostr and LLM model tokens." Probably missed a good few miscellaneous 'buy a thing', but that covers a lot. I have to go via bitrefill for a couple of these, especially internet and electricity bills (in El Salvador; which is also where I got the debit card I can top up with Lightning).

I should also say that 'flights and hotels' being higher cost items, are almost always with btc mainchain or via some other method, but I think I used lightning once or twice here (and will always choose it if I can!). And lastly I should say that having done this for years, with a *self custodial wallet* (I used Electrum a bit but I mostly used Phoenix), I basically *never* have payment routing failures, that used to happen all the time pre-2023.

But apparently I'm all alone because nobody uses Lightning.