Recently, I was shopping online and bought a collagen mask, a puffer jacket and a pair of noise-canceling wireless earbuds. My total bill was $323.91, but nothing was ever delivered.
That’s because I didn’t actually buy — or spend — anything. I was browsing dopamine-shop.com, one of several so-called “dopamine sites” that let you pretend to shop for things without spending any money.
You can also order food that never arrives at sites like foodnevercomes.com. As the founders of the site say, “all the reward, none of the regret.”
Although the pretend shopping trend originated in South Korea, these sites have gone global and popped up in various countries, including Brazil, India and the U.S. One site, dopamineshopping.com, was created in June 2026, runs in 14 languages and claims to have processed “more than 32,000 orders worth exactly nothing.”
“Dopamine sites are frequently promoted as ‘online shopping karaoke,’ a harmless entertainment that provides a zero-cost way to trigger the brain’s reward system,” says Pamela Rutledge, a media psychologist in Newport Beach, California. “Fake shopping lets people imagine having something without the cost, clutter, shame or regret.”
But can pretend shopping help curb your online spending? The jury is still out.
The fun (and dopamine) starts before checkout
You may think the “dopamine” part of these sites comes from completing the fake purchase. But the reward, researchers say, is in the anticipation of the purchase.
“Dopamine is highest doing exactly this: searching, enjoying, having the experience of looking for the perfect thing to add to the cart,” says Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist and psychologist based in Los Angeles who studies addiction, among other things.
Your brain does experience a reward when you receive something, Prause says, but it’s a different system than the one triggered by anticipation. Dopamine is especially involved in the hunt.
Vanessa Dean, an ADHD money coach based in Reidsville, North Carolina, laughs about her own “planner graveyard” — the resting place for all the planners she’s bought and abandoned.
“When I’m looking at them, they have the potential of making me this organized individual instead of someone with ADHD who struggles with keeping track of time and appointments,” Dean says. “The dopamine hit comes from the potential the item has.”
A pretend purchase might help you pause spending
If your shopping problem is that you get bored on a Thursday night and buy things you don’t need, filling a fake cart has the potential to act like a “pause” button on spending.
“Fake shopping could satisfy an urge long enough for it to pass, while introducing friction between wanting and purchasing,” Rutledge says.
Indeed, different kinds of delays can help derail impulse purchases. Deirdre Popovich, associate professor of marketing at Texas Tech University, found in her research that placing items on a wish list lowered purchase intent for shoppers; when they considered the items later, they focused on different qualities.
While the study didn’t look at dopamine sites, it suggests that putting some distance between choosing something and buying it can decrease the urge to buy it.
“Consumers often enjoy the first stage of shopping because it is imaginative and hedonic, but the second stage becomes much more practical,” Popovich says.
But pretend shopping could lead to real shopping
While a fake purchase might appease a shopping urge in some people, it’s not a universal solution. If you’re a compulsive shopper, that behavior is complex, Rutledge says.
“A dopamine site might interrupt the spending behavior,” Rutledge says. “But it doesn’t change the psychological need that made shopping rewarding in the first place.”
Further, you’re still going through the motions of shopping. For some people, Popovich says, “it might just keep them in a constant state of wanting.”
Try your own spending experiment
If you’re curious whether pretend shopping could help you spend less, you can run your own trial. Ordering $50 worth of sushi that never arrives could satisfy your urge to DoorDash dinner.
But if fake shopping doesn’t slow down the real thing — or, worse, makes you want to buy more — you may have to try other strategies. Dean suggests building a list of activities that help to boost your dopamine.
Scrolling social media gives us an “easy or cheap” dopamine hit, Dean says. For other ways to lift your mood, try things like dancing to your favorite song, exercising, crossing something off your to-do list, trying a new hobby or going on a nature walk.
And the appeal of pretend shopping may fade. Rutledge says dopamine sites share similarities with social media, but without the constant supply of new content to keep people interested. Whether they can help people spend less over time remains an open question.
“Right now,” Rutledge says, “there is no solid evidence that reduced spending on these sites carries over into real-world behavior.”
The article Can Pretend Shopping Help You Spend Less? originally appeared on NerdWallet.
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