Science & Technology

Shopping addicts turn to fake 'dopamine hit' sites in South Korea

By T.K. Randall
June 14, 2026

Image: Backlit Keyboard
Credit: Colin via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) Online shopping addiction is a very real problem in developed countries and there is perhaps no place where this is more evident than South Korea - one of the world's most high-tech nations.

Oddly, however, a bizarre solution seems to have presented itself in the form of completely fake online stores that offer the entire shopping experience (and the associated dopamine hit) without actually selling you anything.

On a typical such site, shoppers log in, browse products (complete with user reviews) and then spend (non-existent) money to purchase whatever they like just as they would on a real site like Amazon.The buyer can even track the delivery status of the order, all the way up to their front door, yet nothing ever actually arrives - the entire thing is entirely virtual.

Incredibly, many people swear by these sites as providing a way to exorcise their online shopping addictions without actually spending any money whatsoever.

It all seems like quite a good idea in practice, though, as it happens, this isn't something that seems to have caught on anywhere else.

Whether things will stay that way, however, remains to be seen.

Source: Oddity Central

Tags: Online, Internet