Technically, it started because I was being too good. It was November, and I was buying present after present, from museum shops and little independent stores, and I wasn’t buying anything for myself. It wasn’t the usual order of things: Christmas shopping, for me, usually entails spending quite grotesque amounts of money, as I enjoy buying myself a gift for every gift I get for someone else.
2025 was different, though. I was virtuous. I got everything in person, and I got nothing for me. I congratulated myself as I went back to France, then everything collapsed a few days later. You see, my birthday is on December 29, and I had very little to do during those idle days between the 25th and my return to Britain. I started online shopping.
Well, I browsed for inspiration, as I don’t really buy anything from the internet. You may know this about me, if you’ve been reading my work for a while. I don’t hide it: in fact, I gloat as often as I can. I don’t really buy anything from the internet! I prefer actively wasting both time and money on going to physical shops. Where’s my crown? Where’s my sash?
Actually, you can keep them for now, because I sinned over the Christmas break. My birthday was coming up and I convinced myself I deserved a treat, precisely because I’d not bought myself one all month. For some reason I decided I had to own a leather trenchcoat. I was about to formally enter my mid-30s and it just felt like the sort of garment I ought to wear. I’d look chic yet edgy; elegant yet cool.
Most importantly, I could justify the eye-watering cost of it by seeing it as a piece of my legacy. I acquired a goddaughter last year, and wouldn’t she love to inherit the most wonderful clothes from me in a few decades? My mind was made up: I just had to do it.
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I looked through various websites and made the most of the end-of-year sales. I even did that thing I’ve always judged people for doing, and ordered three different coats so I could try them all on at home, then send two of them back.
Though I’m happy to say that I am now the proud owner of a beautiful (and heavily discounted) black leather mac, this isn’t what concerns us today. Instead, I wanted to talk about what happened afterwards. Because the algorithm, all-seeing eye of Sauron that it is, having spotted that I was in the mood for online shopping, is now refusing to let go of me.
Like a lion with its teeth stuck deep inside the flank of an antelope, it has decided that I just can’t get away again, and must be served ad after ad of delightful clothing I can’t quite afford. For years, I’d managed to avoid its stalking, but now it’s too late. I’ve been caught.
I open Instagram every day and, in order to see what my friends have posted, I must torture myself. I must look at short velvet dresses with dainty collars; at perfectly crafted ankle boots with just the right heel; at heavy jackets with flawless tailoring. I must scroll past them, again and again, and refuse to give in.
Like a monk, I must shield my eyes not only from the clothes themselves but from the messages that accompany them – “60% off!”, “last markdown!”, “extra 20% off applied at checkout!”. I must be told, repeatedly, all day every single day, that these offers will disappear if I don’t click on them right this second, and I must resist the sirens’ call.
I can’t stand it. As I’ve been finding out, there’s just no way to win. I can crack and choose to buy something – like the half-price top currently making its way to me – but that will only make me feel bad; repulsed with myself both for giving in and for being such an easy mark. I can decide to stay strong and that will make me feel bad as well, because I just can’t erase the knowledge of those garments from my memory.
I was once living in peace and now there is this gaping hole in my life which I can’t help but be relentlessly conscious of. It’s not the worst thing in the world but it is quite amazingly irritating. I feel like a whiny little toddler and I hate it. Is it how everyone else feels all the time?
No wonder the whole world feels cranky, in that case. You can’t possibly be your best self if there’s someone always just out of reach, dangling a carrot just feet away from your starving mouth. It’s only been a month for me but I already feel insane. Shouldn’t something be done about this? We recognise that adverts on television can be noxious so, surely, it should be accepted that online ads feel even more pervasive and personal.
In the meantime, I guess I’ll have no choice but to watch dozens of animal videos in a row – reset my algorithm in the way some people do juice cleanses.
It’s the only way. I just can’t live like this.
