"Pretend Shopping"
Aug. 28th, 2009 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorzeoThe other day at work, Matt was looking around his company's website, and his coworker said, "Oh, how cute, you're 'pretend shopping.'"
In days past, it was called "window shopping," back when you could walk down Main Street, looking at store window displays and daydreaming about items therein. Now that a large portion of Main Streets are empty, being replaced with shopping malls and big box stores, the "window" portion of window shopping has become an artifact of language. To window shop, one must actually enter the store and stroll the aisles now.
Online, there aren't even aisles to stroll. I went through the pages of the MMS catalog today, adding items to my cart, just to see how much the order would be. It was very easy to quickly get over $100, just with a few fixed oils and a bunch of flavor oils. The colorants took it up, too. But, instead of completing checkout and spending money earmarked for something else, I just printed out the page, so when I _do_ have money to spend (and when the weather's cooled enough that the waxes and butters won't melt in transit!) I'll remember what I wanted to get.
Pretend shopping. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes, it's depressing.
In days past, it was called "window shopping," back when you could walk down Main Street, looking at store window displays and daydreaming about items therein. Now that a large portion of Main Streets are empty, being replaced with shopping malls and big box stores, the "window" portion of window shopping has become an artifact of language. To window shop, one must actually enter the store and stroll the aisles now.
Online, there aren't even aisles to stroll. I went through the pages of the MMS catalog today, adding items to my cart, just to see how much the order would be. It was very easy to quickly get over $100, just with a few fixed oils and a bunch of flavor oils. The colorants took it up, too. But, instead of completing checkout and spending money earmarked for something else, I just printed out the page, so when I _do_ have money to spend (and when the weather's cooled enough that the waxes and butters won't melt in transit!) I'll remember what I wanted to get.
Pretend shopping. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes, it's depressing.
