Purchase Decision - 1

How we buy things have radically changed over the years. I was watching a show on Hulu one day, and since I’m cheap, there were these ads. I don’t perfectly recall, but it was some sort of a generic commercial. But there was a humidifier in it, and I thought, hmm, I need a humidifier. So I pulled out my phone, went to my Amazon app, typed in humidifier, clicked the best selling one, and bought it in less than 2 minutes. 23 dollars, just gone. Then in two days, it was here. At that point, I almost forgot that I ordered a humidifier. After a week of diligently filling in water and running it every night, it's currently just sitting on my night table (update: it’s in a box now).

 

Our desire-to-purchase time, and desire-to-realization (getting it) time has been dramatically shortened with the advent of technology. It is now extremely easy to buy things at an impulse. 

 

In my opinion, most operations that are based on an app, like Facebook and TikTok, Amazon (the retail part of it, at least) and Netflix, are designed to give you immediate, short bursts of stimulus, and leave you wanting more. It’s like crack cocaine (not that I have first-hand experience with it). Since the kick is so strong and immediate, you cannot: a) quit, b) enjoy other things less immediate. (It is like porn, but luckily our bodies - at least for men - have a built-in system to create a `dead time’ between sexual desires, which acts like a buffer.)  Once you have experienced the quick accessibility of Netflix, you’re not going back to Blockbuster. Institutions like Amazon and Netflix, while convenient, I believe, are slowly deteriorating our ability (or inhibition) to think through things. 

 

One of the ways we lose to these algorithms is from the recommendation systems. We are increasingly affected by these algorithms that feed us information and demand. The rise of extremism in modern times is fueled by these algorithms only solidifying what we already believe in, and involuntarily not exposing us to anything that opposes our views. In doing so, a very well curated, customized (personal) universe is created, which often conflicts with other universes. But since one’s reality is based on what one experiences, one considers the opposing party as radical or invalid. Amazon will tell us what we need, which we somehow agree (it’s like the whole horoscope thing - sorry Libras). We will blindly watch whatever Netflix will recommend to us. Targeted advertisements will have you wanting something you vaguely wanted. This way, we are losing our power as a consumer and becoming more the consumption itself. More and more, we become the product, where we give our data away, to which the companies use to sell more stuff to us, and form us to a more profitable consumer. 

 

My `artificial intelligence rant’ aside (it will continue later), one thing I’d like to focus on is how short-lived a purchase pleasure usually is. It’s something that you think will greatly enrich your life, that having this would make you so much happier - that the reason why you feel a bit down can be in large solved by this purchase. Then you buy it, and are happy for a brief moment, opening the cardboard box and the wrappings, but shortly are followed by a feeling of emptiness. By pursuing the short bursts of pleasure, your room gets more crowded, and life more unsustainable. Despite having proved that they do not produce sustained happiness, we continue. My theory is that we are stuck in the vicious cycle of consumption, because we don’t have an alternative, or at least we believe so.