Add to cart for instant bliss – and lasting debt

‘What’’, said my partner, eyeing the 18 mouldering miniature frames in their nest of unwrapped paper gingerly, ‘‘are those?’’

We both gazed down at the stack of frames. A lone spider that had been napping in the top one yawned, uncurled and began to drag itself aside so we could get a better look.

Clearly, they were a set of miniature portrait holders. The sort of thing that an aristocratic mouse in the 18th century might have commissioned to hang tiny oil paintings of its furry ancestors.

The more pressing question was, why on earth did I buy them? ‘‘Did you get drunk and do an online shop again?’’ he asked, knowing there was no other reasonable explanation, bar my suddenly wanting to paint miniatures of small rodents.

‘‘No,’’ I snapped, hotly aware that this was the third time we’d had this discussion this fortnight. ‘‘They’re . . . for a project!’’ And I gathered them up, stomped off, and quietly deposited them in the dresser’s bottom drawer swamp of other untouched online purchases I’ve made this year.

Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to the everexpanding quagmire of online shopping.

It’s a phenomenon that has hit us in a big way in 2020. And it’s not just the current Christmas rush that I’m talking about.

This really was the year when online shopping went from ‘‘something young people do’’ to ‘‘let’s do the family grocery run on my phone’’. Now everyone from your gran to your boss is getting everything from sex toys to chew toys shipped to their doorsteps.

We can thank Covid for kicking this off. In the pandemonium of the first level 3, NZ Post announced that online shopping had increased by 105 per cent. It’s clearly not just a one-off bump; it’s become mainstream.

Even after the levels dropped, numbers from August, October and the Christmas run-up show that online shopping is still 30 per cent higher than this time last year.

And now many people (bar the Millennials and Gen Z, who started early) are in the first stages of the honeymoon. It’s easy, fun, you can get weirdas stuff you never knew existed. And yeah, that part of online shopping is great.

But, as a virtual veteran of the Millennial and Gen Z era who grew up in the addictive add-tocart aisles of online malls, I can tell you there’s also a big, ugly question coming for you. Namely, are you prepared for it to show you how unhappy you are?

Let me explain. In the last few years, it’s become a weird Millennial habit to have one too many wines and go online shopping (hence my tiny frames).

Ask any of us whether we’ve got drunk recently and ordered $80 worth of gold toasters online from Kmart. Of course we have. It’s what we do on boring Tuesday nights. It’s our version of Zumba.

It’s not just me. Worldwide, one of the most interesting recent trends has been how Millennials are driving a resurgence in online shopping for homeware brands. Both from stores like AliExpress and Kmart, right up to old school fancy pants Le Creuset.

Ask any of us whether we’ve got drunk recently and ordered gold toasters online. Of course we have. It’s what we do on boring Tuesday nights.

The explanation lies in the last few years of spiralling quarter-life crises and burnouts. We turned to online orders for domestic niceties to reassure us we weren’t failing at life. (As someone who is very guilty of this behaviour, I know how stupid it is to think that, if I have good pasta jars, I’m not failing at life . . . but I do.)

We know how ridiculous this is. And how poor it makes us. But if it’s taught us one thing, it’s how online shopping can quickly become a reflex to compensate for personal misery.

Obviously there’s nothing new about the idea of shopping for your feelings. It’s called retail therapy for a reason, right? But what is new is the explosion of options, manipulative algorithms, and how seamless the shopping and shipping process now is.

Whereas once you had to actually walk into town to spend your sadness, now you can order an entirely new life from your couch during a Netflix binge. It’s dangerous.

And now we’re watching as a whole lot more people are discovering AliExpress – while also carrying a whole lot more collective anxiety and frustration after the hell and brimstone debacle of 2020. Take it from us, it’s going to get messy.

Clearly I don’t have a solution to this. I still do it. So just brace yourself: the anxiety-induced add-to-cart is coming for us all.