In One-Click Junkie, Michael Blowhard explains that he doesn’t have many vices:
But there’s one temptation that I now realize has become a problem: buying media-things, especially from Amazon. Hello, my name is Michael Blowhard, and I have a One-Click Addiction. What a high it is: the hunt for just the right DVD/CD/book … Spotting what you need … And, click! — bagging your game. I’ll read it! I’ll watch it! I’ll listen to it! I swear I will!It got pretty bad. It got to where I was receiving three or even four packages a week from Amazon. I’m in no financial danger — those small-town Republican genes aren’t about to let me take anything resembling a financial risk. But the tortured, inward shame of it … The looks the doorman would give me as he handed over yet another package … The heaps of unread books and unlistened-to CDs … It got to where I was hiding Amazon boxes from The Wife, opening them and hurrying them out to the trash before she knew they’d arrived.
His solution?
Instead of buying something that I’ve tracked down, I now put it in my Amazon Wish List. That way, I can still get the thrill of the hunt, even while avoiding making an actual purchase. It’s like drinking 7-Up at a party, or going on a photo safari.
Back in the day, you had to live in a major metropolis to find the books and movies anyone can find on Amazon:
One of the reasons I moved to NYC was to get near the great bookstores and the great movie theaters. (Yes, kids, there really was a time when you had to go somewhere specific — in real space — if you wanted to buy a book or watch a movie. And imagine this: many books and movies weren’t easy to get hold of.) Well, what with Amazon, much of that great big reason for my being in the place where I have worked for decades to make a life has crumbled beneath me. Instead of walking around Manhattan, feeling self-satisfied and thinking, “Hey, it’s worth all the sacrifices,” these days I’m scratching my head and thinking, “Why do I put up with it?”