Confession of a Shopaholic — Series Introduction

(and yes, this is Installment No. 1)
Welcome to the Confession of a Shopaholic — my new series where I document the ridiculous, exhausting, strangely spiritual journey of shopping this winter.

This is the first installment, and honestly?
It exists because I’m currently mentally unwell from shopping.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been stuck in a full-blown hyperfixation spiral — the kind where you refresh currency rates nonstop, watch 400 try-on videos of the same coat, and forget to live your actual life because your entire consciousness has been replaced by shopping carts.
I’ve been sitting in the eye of a consumption typhoon, and my brain has simply… stopped functioning.

So this series is my attempt to crawl out of that trance —
a kind of mindfulness exercise for consumerism,
a way to step one inch outside my own obsession and observe it instead of drowning in it.

It’s half documentation, half coping mechanism, half anthropology of my own dysfunction (yes I know that’s three halves).
But mostly, it’s a space where I can be honest about how shopping hijacks my dopamine, my free time, my decision-making, and my sanity.

If you’ve ever been trapped inside your own “I can’t think about anything except this one sweater” era,
I hope this series feels like companionship rather than confession.

Now—let’s begin Installment No. 1.

The Labor Behind “Just Buying a Sweater”

In 2025, shopping online isn’t leisure. It’s research.
To find the right item — at the right price — you basically need a master’s in digital anthropology.

Here’s my process:

Platform Deep-Dive: Where I Find the Real Truth

YouTube - The Discovery Phase

YouTube is not where I go to confirm the exact item I want — it’s where I go when I have no idea what I want.

If I’m thinking, “I need a winter coat,” but I don’t know the style, silhouette, or mood yet, I’ll search winter coat haul, and suddenly my entire homepage becomes outerwear propaganda.

Inside a few videos, I’m subconsciously forming criteria:
Double-breasted or single?
Knee-length or ankle-length?
Structured shoulders or relaxed?
Camel or charcoal?
Wool blend or cashmere?

YouTube is basically the billboard advertising of the digital world —
High production value, long-form content, mostly professional influencers, and heavily linked to seasonal trends.

And because videos are long, they almost never come from “normal” users; it’s mostly pros.
So YouTube’s job is:
Inspire → Brainwash/Gaslight → Guide you toward a direction
Then I leave and do all the real research elsewhere.

Pinterest - The Vision Board Phase

Pinterest is where I go when I don’t know what I want, but I want to want something.

This is not the place to hunt down the exact product or compare model numbers — it’s the vision board of how you want your finished look to look like.

If I only have a loose idea like, “Hmm… maybe I want a leather jacket this winter,” I’ll type leather jacket outfit into Pinterest and fall into a vortex of possibilities.

Cropped? Short? Mid? Floor-length?Bomber style? Moto? Single-breasted?
Brown, black, oxblood, or random burnt orange shade?
Oversized or regular fit?

Pinterest helps me set the criteria I didn’t know I needed.

Only after I’ve visually calibrated my desire will I go back to TikTok, Xiaohongshu, YouTube, Reddit, etc. to look for the actual item that matches my newly discovered checklist.

In that sense, Pinterest is part of the beginning stage of shopping —
the phase where you’re still pretending this is about “inspiration” and not about spending your rent money on a coat.

Substack & ShopMy - The Expert Logic Stage

These two are more niche but incredibly useful for methodology.

Substack is where fashion writers explain why they choose certain items:
fabric composition, construction, tailoring details, cost-per-wear philosophy, historical references, etc.

It’s where I go when I want to absorb someone’s thought process and refine my own taste.

ShopMy is basically a curated storefront where influencers organize all the items they genuinely love or constantly recommend.
If I want to buy, let's say, a chunky sweater, my routine is something like:

It’s like peeking into someone's know-how for a minute.

Not essential, but very helpful if your taste is evolving.

Instagram - The Middle Ground

Instagram sits somewhere between TikTok and YouTube.
You can search specific product names and find quick videos or photos,
but:

You might find a general sense of how something looks,
but not enough intel to hit “Add to Cart” confidently.

I still check Instagram, but usually after TikTok/XHS and before Reddit.

TikTok & Xiaohongshu (a.k.a Little Red Book) - The Realest of the Real

If you want honest, unfiltered, grassroots reviews, nothing beats TikTok and Xiaohongshu.
These platforms are the true democracy of fashion content — regular people posting real fits, real opinions, and real body info.

When someone posts a review of, say, an Aritzia puffer, the comment section becomes a full-blown Q&A forum.
People ask things like:

And the best part? Most users actually answer.

You get extremely practical information that influencers (often sponsored) never give.

Also — unlike YouTube or Instagram — everyday users feel way less pressure here.
They’ll post low-effort, non-curated clips that show you how an item actually fits, moves, and behaves in real life.

This is why TikTok and Xiaohongshu often have content that exists nowhere else.

Influencers tend to post the same polished video across multiple platforms,
but regular users? They post only on TikTok or XHS — the places that feel casual and low-stakes. So the most useful content (for shopping research) is often exclusively here.

Gatekeeping is also low.

People openly share their measurements, honest critiques, and sizing issues — because online shopping forces everyone to crowdsource information in order to make a smart purchase.

Influencers, on the other hand, often can’t say “This sucks” even if it sucks.
So people don’t even bother asking them anymore.

It’s fascinating — same platform, completely different roles:

Honestly? I trust the latter way more.

Reddit - Brutally Honest, But Not Visual

Reddit is where I go when I want qualitative, community-driven opinions —
not how something looks, but whether it’s worth it.

People discuss:

This is the opposite of influencer culture —
nobody is trying to sell you anything.

The downside:

When I was choosing between different Aritzia Super Puff models, Reddit helped me understand warmth, fill power, and whether the brand’s quality has dropped over the years.

But Reddit is never my first or last step — it’s the place I visit in the middle, when I want to sanity-check my thoughts.

Fruits (the Korean Depop/Vinted):

Fruits is Korea’s Depop— an addictive secondhand marketplace that even CORTIS name-dropped in their latest song FaSHioN.

Both B2C vintage shops and regular people use it, so the listings range from “holy grail, I need this immediately” to “why is this 40,000 won?”

I usually come here in the later stage of shopping. Because at that point, one of two things has happened:

Fruits is often the only place where the exact niche item I imagined actually exists. But here’s the painful part: you can’t return anything.

So you have to decide — based solely on photos and measurements — whether this is your soulmate coat or a 3-year-long regret (LITERALLY). You won’t know until it arrives, and within five seconds, you sometimes instantly feel, “Oh. I will never wear this. Ever.”

And then what?
You can’t return it.
You have to keep it, throw it away, or resell it back on Fruits —
joining the eternal cycle of someone else’s 3-week-long internal debate.

And yes, if you resell it, prepare for 100 people to message you with questions like:

“언니 혹시 어깨 몇이세요?”
“착샷 가능할까요?”
“실제로는 좀 더 밝은 색인가요??”

Buying vintage is not shopping. It’s a gamble.
But sometimes… the highs make the lows worth it.

Wrapping UP: When Shopping Becomes Work

Even after all that, clicking “buy” still feels like a gamble.
Maybe the fit’s off. Maybe I overspent. Maybe I’ll hate it next week.

This is why online shopping doesn’t feel like shopping anymore.
It’s data analysis. It’s labor disguised as leisure.

Sometimes I miss old-school offline shopping — spending one afternoon walking around, touching fabrics, trying things on, and just deciding.
Now I spend days cross-referencing spreadsheets and review threads.

At least when I used to shop in person, I only lost one day.
This Black Friday? I’ve already lost over two weeks — and my sanity.