Meryl Callaway
Staff Writer
As Christmas is looming nearer, everybody is rushing to find the perfect gift for the special people in their lives. They are scurrying to shopping malls and lurking through the dark corners of the internet, desperately searching for inspiration, but is online or in-store shopping better?
In my opinion, good, old-fashioned, in-store shopping is better. When you go shopping in a store it is an experience. You walk in and you can physically see what you may buy. You can feel the quality of fabric, see the fit of the clothing in person, and find unlikely inspiration in a simple, obsolete item.
When shopping online, you are stuck in a desolate wasteland. A desolate wasteland that is perfectly curated to fit your exact search history. Why? Major companies are collecting and analyzing data on you. This data then follows you as you travel through the internet. The same products constantly plague your screen because you made one search and prices keep fluctuating based on the amount of interest you show in the product. It is also creepy. When you go shopping in a store, you do not have to deal with the annoying advertisements, there is only one set price, and nobody is monitoring the items that you are interested in.
This wasteland also makes it impossible to find what you are looking for, impossible to see what you are looking at, and impossible to complete a transaction in a timely fashion. This is incredibly frustrating. Between website crashes, slow internet connection, and the website blatantly not working, it feels like you are pulling teeth. You also have to be very talented in the art of super sleuthing, operating covert missions just to find the dimensions of a candlestick.
Call me antiquated, but shopping is all about experience and shopping in a physical store provides the most pleasant shopping experience.
