Why Won't Jeff Bezos Take More Of My Money

you have most of it, poach the rest too

Gobble gobble, Stumpies! I hope you’re having a wonderful November, for those who celebrate. I may be getting this post out charmingly late, but that’s only because I was too full of seasonal cheer [and definitely not liquor] to be on a computer. Today, however, I must diligently power through my cheer and get back to the grindstone, both for you and my boss. You see, today we celebrate the greatest holiday, a fundamentally American holiday: Black Friday. I would be gravely remiss if I did not post in its honor. This magnificent jubilation is all about the deals, the sales, the grift, the grab. Black Friday was invented to fulfill our most basic instincts of “gimme gimme gimme.” Now, I’m as sad as you are that Black Friday has been so weenified by the intrusion of the new-fangled so-called ““internet commerce”” that people are no longer trampling each other to death in a Walmart [mostly]. That used to be a proud tradition highlighting the survival of the fittest! However, today I want to talk about a far more sinister consequence perpetuated by the Patron Saint of Friday’s Black itself - Amazon.

Tis the season that most of us will be rolling up our sleeves, agonizing over the perfect gift for that special person, and then buying the Amazon Basics version. Let’s face it, you love it, you hate it, you can’t escape the Amazon jungle. Do I feel simply awful when I order something online and it’s eligible for next day delivery? Yes. Absolutely. It is An Abomination. Nothing was ever meant to be that fast. No one should be up at 6am fulfilling any of my wants or needs. There is positively no way on god’s green earth that I need replacement Brita filters in under 12 hours. And yet, I do.

Look at this overwhelming nightmare. I need to be sedated.

Amazon has certainly changed the course of human history with its speed and efficiency. I’m not here to litigate the ethics of that [I’m pro-cheating in sports, so you really don’t want me to litigate the ethics of anything]. Instead, I’m going to do what I do best here on The Stump. Here, typing in my living room, surrounded by my loving family, I’m going to bitch my ass off. Amazon is committing the grave sin of leaving money on the table, and I’m here to dig in the knife. Jeff Bezos, if you’re reading this, I’m counting this as a consultation and legally you now owe me $10 million. Consider it my Black Friday Sale.

Not so “Prime” are you now, jeffy boy!

Let me break it down: we all love stuff. Sure, that lady Empty Kondo had her moment and we all pretended to be satisfied by eXpeRiENces and ReLatIonSHiPs, but none of that feels better than getting a fresh load of stuff. I have never wanted to talk to a person after having a bad day. I have, however, wanted to order that new eye cream in my Amazon cart. There’s a childlike wonder to getting mail, but when you combine that with Amazon and adult money, the wonder can arrive whenever you need! Even better than having stuff is the quest for stuff. If you’ve ever perused a Target, a Home Depot, an H&M, a Shell Gas Station just looking to see whatcha see, then you get it. There’s an endless allure in such stores because you never know what you’re going to find. Do I need a screwdriver with a little LED light on the end? No, but it sure is nifty! Do I need another t-shirt with a wacky Minor League baseball logo on it? No, but they are so silly! If there’s something more intoxicating than touching every single sweater in a store to see which is the softest, I haven’t found it.

The platonic ideal route through any store.

And yet, wandering around a store inevitably brings A Crash. Consider the ultimate form of wandering around a store: going to the mall. It is maximally fun for the first hour… it is 75% fun the second hour… it is 30% fun the fourth hour… it is 0% fun the sixth hour. My body is a delicate ecosystem - if I’m upright too long, I begin to collapse. My back hurts, my feet hurt, my eyes hurt, my patience hurts! You know what doesn’t hurt? Luxuriating on my couch. And therein lies the magic of Amazon. They have distilled the entire shopping experience that one can find at the mall into a little screen that I can enjoy right from bed. Except they haven’t.

IN THEORY, Amazon has captured the mall experience in the palm of our hands. In practice, however, Amazon . com is made for those who know what they want, not for those who don’t know what they might want. Sometimes, I just want to find a little $10 trinket that means nothing deeper to me. I want something to take the sting of my boss calling me “undisciplined” [I decline to comment on whether that is a true story, but he would be correct if it is]. Although I am bullying Amazon in particular about this [because it would be cowardly to avoid taking on the king], internet commerce in general has yet to figure out how to make me “stay in their store,” so to speak. I should be able to browse the metaphorical aisles in Amazon for hours on end. When I go to Target, I can spend, and very much have spent, a full hour just in the candle aisle smelling each individual scent. Target doesn’t watch me pick up “Eucalyptus Sea Breeze” and then only allow me to pick up scents with the words “eucalyptus,” “sea,” and “breeze” after. Instead, I am allow to sample the gamut of human olfactory creativity.

This is Amazon’s main BLACK FRIDAY page. Who is buying this??? How is this possibly optimized for consumption????

To put a crystal clear point on it, Amazon’s UI is dogshit. And no other online retailer is doing much better. We’re all aware of the recurring issue whereby these online stores will see you bought a refrigerator and then serve you recommendations as if you need 283 more refrigerators. But even more egregiously, it is alarmingly hard to just shop online if all you want to do is relaxingly stroll through products. Yes, I want to have my cake and eat it too [wishing for anything less than that really misunderstands the purpose of cake] - I want to see a marriage between ambling aimlessly through brick-and-mortar store aisles and doing that horizontally in my own home.

Time to really get to the yelling

“Oh but Katie, online shopping/Amazon is so much worse.” False. Next! “Well Katie, it’s just too much to ask that a company with infinite resources that would be the 16th richest country in the world if it were a country to spend a little of that money on their user experience, which would lead them to making even more money!” Do you hear how you sound right now? Do you hear how utterly preposterous you are being? Don’t let Amazon off the hook for this.

What do you meannnn that the second tab on the “best sellers” page is for software, and it’s all just the same tax software? *sobbing emoji*

If Amazon insists on crumbling all alternative retail options and collapsing shopping into a ruthlessly efficient-and-soul-crushing experience, we should at least demand that they be a little clever about it. How hard is it for them to understand that if I want a replacement cap for the air hole in my car tire, I also want a new set of kooky pens? Amazon - if I’m buying anything that is Not Fun and Necessary, I am distraught. Every time I so much as have to replace the toilet paper roll in the bathroom I think “why, me again, god?” [less of an exaggeration than you might think]. The ratio of doing things I need to function to doing things that are good needs to be at least about 2:1, or things start to get dicey. Amazon should certainly be able to figure this out after years of my innocuous little purchases for frivolous things on their website. I am not a complicated lady, I have a pattern.

We all have our patterns. Some people are serial crafters - you buy one bundle of yarn, and you would probably buy a scrapbooking kit if the algorithm served it to you. Some people are media connoisseurs - you buy a new set of nice TV speakers, and you would probably buy drink coasters for your movie nights. Some of you are opportunists - you bought something on sale for 79% off, and you would probably buy a completely unrelated item if it was 81% off. We may all be unique, but we are not unpredictable. Except Amazon, which is going to continue to serve me - verifiably in their system as a mid-20-something-woman - the same toddler Disney princess dress overandoverandoverandoverandover again because I bought it for my niece once in 2021.

Bet you thought I was kidding.

I’m going to let you go so you can rush to the nearest store and make the most of your Black Friday by punching out a stranger over a toaster

Some folks may find this post unsympathetic. Among our most ubiquitous low-hanging fruit jokes in the zeitgeist right now is anything of the flavor that: 1) my phone is listening to me and serving me ads, 2) my phone knows too much about me, 3) I bought this thing on Amazon and somehow Facebook knows, etc., etc. I’m here to tell you it’s okay to retire those jokes and lean in. You can’t shout at the tide to stop it from rising, and you can’t stop Amazon’s quest for intergalactic domination.

Instead, redirect your criticisms. Focus on asking our emergent world a little bit better by at least demanding that our commercial overlords have to use their vast armies of data scientists to do something useful for you. We’ve spent decades telling kids There is simply no reason that the UI for Amazon should ever have a page that ends or is generalizable to every modern person. To that end, it would be oh so convenient if Amazon provided a forum for such discussions. Oh they do! Folks, if you want to see change, it turns out you can email feedback-amazon-app-iphone@amazon.com. Wouldn’t it just warm your holiday hearts to bully a massive corporation in the name of The Stump? Maybe we can’t change the course of the world here, Stumpies, but we can do what we do best - scream into the void about trivial things whether or not anyone is out there listening.

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