Let me paint a picture for you;
It’s 8 pm and all my kids are finally in bed. I am in my lounge-around-the-house clothes (we all have this, right?) and I am curled up on the couch scrolling my phone. Maybe I’m checking my saved searches on TRR or maybe I’m window-shopping-scrolling Poshmark. Maybe I’m checking my Pinterest feed for outfit inspiration to plug into my Whering app (read more about that here). But then my fingers start to itch. Not physically but in this psychological sense. My fingers ITCH to hit “purchase” on something.
Do you get this too?
Maybe it looks different for you but I get the feeling that there is a collective shopping scroll that is happening at some point most days. And maybe you don’t get the itchy fingers feeling or maybe you would describe it different. But I also get the feeling that we are all chasing the little high we get on-line shopping.
I wrote about the dopamine hit that we get from shopping sales and then I read
’s The State of Culture 20241 where he said;The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction. Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity.
The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.
If I thought that shopping sales provides a dopamine hit, perhaps I failed to investigate how our modern way of shopping puts us in that dopamine loop (sale or not).
Ted brilliantly explained how we live in dopamine culture, always chasing the next hit of dopamine which creates a habit which forms an addiction. Ted created this graphic to show how this plays out over different places in culture.
Ted describes this final column as compulsive activity and notably all of these take place (largely) on smartphones. But I found SHOPPING to be a missing category of interest so I made this;
We replaced browsing a catalog or driving to a mall with on-line shopping. But I remember when on-line shopping began (is my age showing?) and it felt risky to put your credit card into the website and then wait days (or weeks) for an item to arrive. Returns? Forget about that. Now we live in an era where you can shop someone’s outfit from your phone and have it all to your doorstep in a few days. Don’t like it? No problem, just return it.
And the thing about this compulsive shopping is that it puts us into The Dopamine Loop laid out brilliantly, again, by Ted here:
So let’s go back to my scenario. The Stimulus is the sitting on the couch at the end of a long day and the Distraction from that is scrolling. Dopamine is released when I hit “purchase” and I am flooded with pleasure and anticipation as I wait for my new prize to arrive.
Here’s where the Dopamine Loop is most problematic for me (among many problems); while I wait for the item I purchased to arrive, I already experience the Desire for More and re-enter the Loop. I reset the loop before I’ve actually experienced the pleasure of the item. The pleasure is sometimes just hitting BUY!
There are ways out of the Dopamine Loop;
- and I have talked about how keeping a wishlist often relieves that “need to buy pressure.”
- and I have both written about going shopping in-person again for the tactile experience of shopping.
Ted also wrote a follow up piece, How to Break Free from Dopamine Culture, and I loved his suggestion of connecting with people.
But I had a realization as I looked at Ted’s graphic specifically the funnels that trap me.
Stimulus → Distraction
and the
Desire for More → Reinforcement
funnels.
Again, back to my scenario; if my Stimulus is sitting on the couch and Distracting myself on my phone (aka scroll-shopping) then I need to change my nightly habit. And if my Desire for More to Reinforcement funnel comes from not the delayed gratification of actually receiving a purchase then I need to change the way I shop. I have to put some road blocks in this loop so that I’m not circling the drain ever faster.
I’ve been having conversations lately about how it does feel like there is the need to purchase NOW NOW NOW. We are HUNGRY to hit “buy” but I think it’s because we want the easy hit of dopamine.
I’m reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and he writes;
We want to take the easy way out but what makes us happy is the harder thing… Our phone offers us the easy thing rather than the IMPORTANT thing
So the easy thing is to give ourselves the dopamine hit as frequently as we crave it but, perhaps, the IMPORTANT thing is truly knowing our style and shopping with intention. For some this looks like 5 Items a Year, for others this looks like in-person vintage browsing and for (a lot of us) this probably looks like being able to realize we are in the dopamine cycle and putting guardrails up to protect us from making regretful purchases.
I also discovered something recently that has helped me de-influence myself from making a purchase that I thought could be helpful for all my shopping loving friends.
I’ve written before about how I use Google Lens to find an item that an influencer is wearing and, often, Google gives great alternative suggestions. But recently when I was image searching an item for less expensive alternatives I was also faced with the reality that I am also sold by the styling or fabrication of the item. Let me explain…
The pants in question are these cool ring three leather, drawstring pants from Massimo Dutti (side note: if you haven’t looked at Massimo Dutti recently, I highly recommend their LIMITED collection for some incredible The Row lookalikes).
I don’t know exactly why I liked them. Is it that they are leather? Perhaps. Their color certainly influenced me as I’m always looking to add ring 3 colors to my closet. I also loved the cut of them for Spring/Summer. But they sell for over $400 and I wasn’t convinced that I couldn’t find something similar elsewhere. So I right-clicked the image and selected “Search image with Google.”
Now here’s where things got dicey (and clarifying) for me. You see, all the options Google showed me I sort of…hated.
Sometimes I think we get tricked into liking something because of the way it is styled on the website or we are Label Dickmatized (s/o
for this term). It reminds me of that time pointed out that The Row’s lookbook could have just as easily been Land’s End.Sometimes removing the context of the item and looking instead at the fact that this is a pair of vaguely green-beige drawstring pants that would not stand out in a sea of clothing is just enough to talk myself off any edge.
This should be required reading! If you haven’t read it yet, do so but make sure you’re sitting down ;)
Recently on her YouTube channel, Hannah Louise Poston has had some episodes talking about this issue from a different angle. She noticed she didn’t want to be scrolling to shop all the time and after some thought realized her habit was a distraction from some issue or problem she couldn’t fix or address. Her solution was to write down what she was scrolling for (new pair of pants, say) and read a book instead. She allowed herself to only work on the list on the weekend. I'm concerned about my own over-shopping, and realized I too was using it as a distraction (thinking to myself “I can’t solve this work problem right now, but I bet I can solve the easier problem of what red socks to buy"). Just knowing that I’m doing this has been part way to stopping it, but in the moment it’s a hard habit to break or sometimes even acknowledge.
Re your convo with Tiia, your post was timely! I just listened to a Mel Robbin’s podcast (10 things I wish I knew in my 20s) and #3 or 4 was “don’t waste your money on stupid shit”. She said her 20-something yo daughters were raised in the era of the online shopping dopamine hit and just buy simply opening up their Notes app and writing what they were just about to quickly buy was enough to satisfy them.
Also, on a personal level, I’ve been turning to Distraction when I’ve been feeling a vague sense of anxiety or discomfort. Where I might have turned to my phone, or food, or - ahem - other distractions, I’ve tried to breathe and focus on my body. It has helped to ground me in the present and the moment to resort to a Distraction often (not always) passes. I’m hoping to continue this practice!