Perversions of a 25 year old Shopping Addict

we don’t seem to want things anymore, instead we just have them

I scroll Vinted the same way I assume perverts scroll on the instagram explore page, just drooling over the behinds of Instagram models and whatever else happens on Reels.

I love clothes and I’ve convinced myself I love them more than you do and thats why its okay for me to keep shopping. To be fair I do have a Balenciaga 100% wool skirt bartered down to 49€ right now that I have not pulled the trigger on, so its not like I’m going into credit card debt for my shopping (yet), but I think I’m finally ready to admit I have a problem.

We are all buying things we do not need, but that isn’t the issue. I think the real issue is that we don’t seem to want things anymore, instead we just have them. There’s a difference and it matters. Your FYP is not a mirror, it’s not proof that the internet knows you, you are a data point. Age, location, gender, how much time you spent watching a Reel about jorts is enough for the algorithm to put you in a cluster and is now serving you content and advertisements based on that. That’s the goal of targeted advertisements, you feel understood instead of being sold to. The algorithm looked at your behaviour, cross-referenced it with a few million other people's behaviour, and handed you an identity in the form of a product carousel. You didn't develop a relationship with the thing you wanted, you were simply served it, and you said yes before you'd even registered the question.

There is an entire corner of TikTok dedicated to performing awareness of capitalism while also being extremely for sale. The girlies who explain that they’ve been manipulated by consumerism in a video that is itself sponsored by a candle brand. Knowing the name of the thing that’s happening to you is not the same as it not happening to you.

The uncomfortable question that the capitalism conversation always manages to avoid is this: why are you so easy? Not easy to exploit in some abstract sense, but easy in the specific and embarrassing sense. You see a girl with good skin holding a bottle and something in you goes yes, I need that, and you don’t stop to ask where that need came from or whether it was yours to begin with. Capitalism didn’t put that reflex in you, it found the reflex and built an entire infrastructure around it.

And it goes further than skincare. Capitalism has taught young men that women want to be choked during sex. Not through some explicit campaign but through the same mechanism, algorithmically optimised content, endlessly looping, gradually normalising a preference until it feels natural instead of like a product. Porn, like TikTok, is a platform. It is in the business of keeping you watching, and it has shaped what you think you want the same way your FYP has shaped what you think you need in your bathroom cabinet. The desire feels original because desire always feels original. So yes, we can blame capitalism, but we should probably have a conversation with ourselves about why we are such reliable customers.

TikTok shop feels like the magnum opus of a project that has been underway for 15 years, how can we remove every possible hesitation between wanting something and owning it? Amazon made it possible to make purchases without leaving the house, one-click purchase got rid of the cart, same day delivery got rid of the wait, all things that took away the opportunity for you to change your mind. TikTok removed the context switch, you are watching a girl do her makeup and suddenly without having to do anything you own a part of her routine. The desire and transaction happened in the same moment. This is what I mean when I say that the problem isn’t consumption, its the disapearance of desire.

So yes, I am a pervert, I’m not walking back on that. But there is levels to perversion and I think it’s worth making the distinction. What I'm doing on Vinted is predatory in a way that requires something from me. I have to know what I'm looking for, I have to know what something is worth, which means I have to have spent time caring about it, reading about it, wanting it for long enough that the want developed some layers. The Balenciaga skirt has been sitting in a cart for a week now at 49€ and I have not pulled the trigger, and that waiting period is not indecision, it's the fantasy. I'm living inside the want, I'm teasing myself, I'm asking myself whether I love it or whether I love the idea of it, and that question alone puts me in a completely different category of consumer.

I’m not better because I spend less, shop more ethically or more considered or whatever. I’m better because I’m still actually feeling something, the wanting is the point. The wanting is where everything interesting lives, the specific pleasure of imagining the thing in your life before it arrives. TikTok Shop has taken an entire generation out of that experience and replaced it with the brief rush of ownership.

The way I shop is like scrolling the depths of Tumblr to find a black and white softcore gif with a 3000 word Zayn Malik fanfic written underneath it. Niche, slow, requiring a specific kind of investment from the person looking, you have to want to be there. The average TikTok Shop customer has skipped all of that and gone straight to whatever the equivalent of just clicking the first tumblr post you see. Technically they got what they wanted, but they didn’t really want it?

I started this ready to admit i have a problem and that still stands true. I think what’s wrong with me is a little more specific, wanting things isn’t the problem, the problem is that wanting things is now weird in a culture that has removed wanting from the equation entirely.

Since starting this essay earlier this year I’ve bought the skirt. But thats not important, what I’ve been trying to get across is that there is something worth protecting in the experience of being genuinely, uncomfortably, specifically turned on by something before you own it. That friction isn't a design flaw in the shopping experience, it's where the desire actually lives.

Everyone who bought something off TikTok Shop this week without really knowing why they wanted it has been quietly robbed of something they probably didn’t know they had. WANT!! The specific, inconvenient want that belongs to you rather than to an algorithm.

I’m still a pervert, I’m just one of the old fashioned kind, the kind that has to be seduced first. And in 2026 that’s apparently enough to make me feel superior about it, so here we are.