Let me guess. You woke up, made your little coffee, opened your laptop, and whispered to yourself, “I’ll just take a quick peek.” Three hours later you’re the proud owner of a mini waffle maker, a posture corrector, and a 36-pack of Korean sheet masks even though you eat cereal standing up and your skin is fine.
Welcome to Prime Day: the Olympics of impulse spending, where nobody wins except Jeff Bezos’s rocket fuel fund.
It’s not a sale. It’s a spectacle.
Prime Day isn’t designed to help you save money. It’s designed to make you feel like you’re saving money, while quietly draining your bank account in $17.99 increments. It’s capitalism’s version of a scratch-off ticket: flashy, addictive, and mathematically engineered so the house always wins.
Yes, technically there are “deals.” But let’s be honest, most of the time, those deals are:
A product you didn’t want
Bundled with a product you actively don’t want
“Marked down” from a price that was jacked up last week
Or some absolute nonsense like a Bluetooth avocado slicer with 2.5 stars
The urgency? Manufactured. The countdown timers? Theater. The dopamine hit when you click “Buy Now”? A Pavlovian bell you didn’t even realize had been installed in your brain.
The rush is real (and that’s the point)
Let’s talk psychology. Prime Day is one giant behavioral experiment, and we’re the mice. Limited-time offers, scarcity messaging, “lightning deals”. It’s all built to short-circuit your prefrontal cortex (the one that does logic and restraint) and activate your lizard brain.
Your brain isn’t thinking, Do I need this?
It’s thinking, What if I miss out and die cold and waffle-less?
This isn’t a character flaw. It’s design. And Amazon knows it. Prime Day isn’t about meeting consumer needs. It’s about creating them out of thin air and then rewarding you for obeying the urge.
You’re not saving $40, you’re spending $60
There’s this myth that getting something 40% off is a win. But if you weren’t going to buy it in the first place, it’s not a discount, it’s a distraction. You didn’t “save” $40. You spent $60 on a drone you’ll use once before it gets stuck in a tree and traumatizes a squirrel.
Saving money isn’t about grabbing a good deal. It’s about knowing what you actually need and resisting the urge to let a billion-dollar company define that for you.
So what should you do?
Here’s a revolutionary concept: You don’t have to participate.
You can opt out. You can close the tab. You can remember that there is no emergency that requires a portable carpet cleaner at 3 a.m.
Instead, try this:
Make a wishlist and sit on it. If you still want it in a week (or a month), then check if it’s on sale.
Use a price tracker (like CamelCamelCamel) to see if it’s actually a good deal or just psychological warfare.
Unsubscribe from the hype. No one is judging your worth by the number of lightning deals you conquer.
And if you do buy something? No shame. We’ve all been there. I once bought a gel manicure kit during Prime Day because I saw it on Instagram. It has not been opened. It haunts me.
So remember, Prime Day isn’t about helping you save, it’s about making you feel like you’re saving while sneakily profiting off your FOMO.
Buy what you need when you need it. And remember: the best deal of all is not spending money on garbage you didn’t even know existed yesterday!
XO
Eden