It’s Too Easy to Buy Stuff You Don’t Want

I’ve made many impulse purchases in my life, but the first one that I found genuinely unsettling was a pair of Nike VaporMax sneakers. It was July 2018, and I was mindlessly tapping through Instagram updates while waiting to meet friends for lunch. That’s where I saw the sneakers, tucked between photos of last night’s outfits and this morning’s bagels: futuristic, baby pink, and a new arrival, according to the ad. This was the heyday of artificial sneaker scarcity, when every design worth a damn sold out before you even had a chance to decide if you liked it. I pounced.

The order took maybe 15 seconds. I selected my size and put the shoes in my cart, and my phone automatically filled in, I thought to myself as I tapped the “Buy” button. Almost as soon as I’d paid, I snapped out of the mania that had briefly overtaken me, $190 (Jesus Christ) poorer but with one pair of -looking shoes on their way to my apartment. It’s always a little horrifying to realize that advertising has worked on you, but this felt more like I had just watched the velociraptor in learn to use the doorknob. I had completed some version of the online checkout process a million times before, but never could I remember it being quite so spontaneous and thoughtless. , I thought to myself, .