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Dubai Diaries: Social media and the curse of online shopping

There comes a day when you know social media’s tentacles reach the deep pocket of your wallets and wipe out the last pretty penny.

None of us are surprised any more that social media works as a secret spyware installed into our phones. We are there despite the discomfort of knowing that we are being tracked. With every like, share and post we do on our Facebook, Insta or WhatsApp, we know that our private data is being secretly mined and manipulated to influence our choices and opinions.

Remember how we cringed in horror watching the Netflix original series The Social Dilemma, which exposed the dark underbelly of social media and the impunity with which it marauds into our privacy, over and over again. But, yes, we got back into our virtual world with a renewed vigor without giving a dime about being watched.

It is a trap; we all know that.

And we have signed up knowing that it is not easy to get out even if we want to. We prefer to brush under our memory carpet how Facebook stole data of millions of its customers and leaked it to other tech giants like Netflix, Spotify, Apple and Amazon. We embrace the willing suspension of disbelief even when we know that elections have been influenced thanks to stolen data. But there comes a day when you know social media’s tentacles reach the deep pocket of your wallets and wipe out the last pretty penny. As a victim, let me bare it all and pin another badge of infamy to social’s media’s bulging chest.

As the summer began, I decided to spruce up my home as the pitiless sun won’t allow much outdoor fun for the next five months. A new elegant couch, a few extra plants to add energy to the living room, and a fresh sprightly coat of paint was what I had in mind. Maybe rearrange the bedroom a bit, purge the wardrobes and make some extra space, and rearrange the kitchen cupboard – and that was all about it.

Little did I know that my online search for a pristine white couch would spell my economic downfall. Before I knew, my Facebook and Instagram have paired up with every home décor and furniture dealer and started to parade their wares on my wall. The dark, camel leather couches that I was secretly wishing to splurge on, the Italian crystal wine glasses and the Japanese teapots, the vintage floor lamps that would look perfect with my antique centre table, lemon printed cushions, wall décor which I don’t know where to hang.

The online shopping vultures were flapping their wings and waiting to swoop down and tear my credit card into shreds. And they did. Even when I am on a deadline writing a column on the UAE-Austria bilateral ties, Google would throw up a tighter deadline with a timer ticking on my screen that a particular sale is ending in just two hours. “If you want those cushions covers, ACT NOW”, it will scream at me.

And I acted. And I succumbed. Though I fought hard, I lost more online battles than I won. Though I have never been a shopaholic like Rebecca Bloomwood who believed, ‘When I shop, the world gets better, is better. Then it is not anymore, and I have to do it again,’ I became one thanks to social media and its power on my purse.