"Hauls are the shopping equivalent of a dopamine-chasing overdose. That is the essence of the idea, which is less about any one thing..."

"... than about the sheer number of things. It’s the elevation of quantity over quality, muchness as an end in itself. Like social media itself, and smartphones, the haul creates its own subset of compulsive behavior.... That addiction isn’t officially a part of the DSM-5, the most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but it is recognized by the Cleveland Clinic and the journal World Psychiatry, among other official bodies.... Not surprisingly, an anti-haul movement has grown in response, at least in a limited way. The hashtag #antihaul has almost 3,000 posts on TikTok; #deinfluence, about 4,500...."

Writes Vanessa Friedman in "I Haul, Therefore I Am/It is the shopping phenomenon of our times, and now it’s an Amazon store" (NYT).

I watched a lot of that "anti-haul" material at the TikTok link, and it's the video equivalent of junky clutter. It's chirpily and lengthily informing us that unneeded stuff is unneeded. Some of the videos are shot in a store — here's trashy nonsense that we shouldn't buy — and some are in the TikToker's own home — here are various items she's throwing out. I feel sorry for the young women — they are all women — who need support freeing themselves from things they don't need. I think this is basically an emotional problem of the young. You have amorphous hunger and acquisitiveness. If you wait long enough, I predict it will go away. Until then, direct that energy into building something of value. You know what those things are. I don't need to list them.