The internet is a mall, and we are trapped inside it

RECENTLY, in need of an outfit for a wedding, I typed the words “green floor-length dress floral” into Google and clicked the shopping tab.

- JENNY SINGER

The results were mixed: Some dresses were not green, some were not floral and others were not floor-length. Many looked eerie, like artificial intelligence creations sloppily photoshopped onto models. As I scrolled, I tried to make my best guesses about which dresses actually existed, what their tulle and satin would feel like against my body.

A $348 (R6180) Reformation dress in a shade called “Garden” looked promising. I clicked. Two hours later, the dress appeared in my inbox, under the words “CAUGHT YOU LOOKING.” According to the email, the dress I was looking at was “almost sold out.”

The next day, as I read a news article online, an image of the dress crawled across the screen. Then came another email, filling my screen with more ankle-skimming florals in pistachio and sage. My past desires pursued me across the web, each one prodding me to make a purchase. The more I saw the green dress, the more I felt that it was already a part of my life and that with just a few strokes of the keyboard, we could be united.

“The future of commerce has no channels at all,” wrote Harley Finkelstein, the president of the e-commerce platform Shopify, earlier this year. “It’s an invisible thread woven seamlessly through every aspect of consumers’ lives.” That thread is getting easier for companies to weave as more of our lives are lived online. More than 40% of adults say they are online “almost constantly,” and the vast majority of us spend at least some of that time shopping.