Pylimitics

How Much is That Doggie in the Window? was a hit song back in 1953. It was partly about window shopping, which was a thing back in the days of “departments stores” located on city streets. They typically had large plate-glass windows with elaborate displays of all their most desirable goods. Macys in New York City still does that, I think. There was a whole profession dedicated to setting up those displays.

The idea of window shopping was that even if you didn’t have the money to buy the things you saw, it was a form of entertainment to look at the things and daydream about owning them. Or at least about the proud moment of purchasing.

The sentiment lives! There are dopamine sites — websites where you can shop for luxury goods, put them in your cart, and even check out. You even enter your real address (or a fake one; you can claim to live in your favorite ultra-rich enclave). You can track your delivery!

But there is no delivery. When you checked out, you didn’t pay anything. Your purchases don’t really exist. You were window shopping, 2026 style.

There are evidently at least a few of these sites; the most evocative name is The Dopamine Shop. You can shop for a $10,000 wristwatch (Rolex) or a $12,000 handbag (Hermés) and “order” them. The basic idea they share is that shopping is the good part. Actually purchasing and owning are secondary. This makes sense to me, even though I have never enjoyed shopping of any kind. It makes sense because I have been (and am) intimately acquainted with people who really enjoy the activity. It also makes sense because in my experience, most products are not as useful, durable, satisfying, or valuable as you hope. You don’t think about the waiting room in the auto repair shop when you’re looking for a new car. And you probably don’t realize that the switch on your new kitchen device is poorly placed, or the inscrutability of the settings panels of the software you wanted.

Disentangling shopping from purchasing and owning has been around for quite a while (maybe even a really long time), and many people have been doing exactly the same thing by going to, say, Amazon and popping items they’d like to have into a cart or wish list, but stopping there. Maybe that was the inspiration for the dopamine sites. The term “retail therapy” exists for a reason; if you’re somebody who enjoys shopping, you can do it for free. With or without traveling to Macy’s in New York or to your local mall (if you still have a local mall, that is).

I have yet to really figure out why shopping has never been fun for me (in fact quite the opposite). I wonder if it goes back to my childhood, when my mother did enjoy it, and I was often there too out of necessity. Could be.