At a time when food delivery apps have swiftly become the norm, a writer on GQ is thinking otherwise. He is encouraging you to quit this system, particularly UberEats and DoorDash.
Web of traps
P.E. Moskowitz has a New Year’s resolution and that’s to quit those platforms.
“Last year, I decided to stop using food delivery apps like DoorDash and UberEats,” he said.
He added that he discovered that in order for a New Year’s resolution to work and be effective, it must be able to tackle a much larger problem.
“By attempting to live up to that goal, you also learn a lot about how your brain, life, and the world work,” Moskowitz wrote.
He said technology has become a huge part of humanity’s daily existence and it is extremely difficult to realize how people have become so dependent on it. He went on to say how people “click and scroll to pay for stuff online, without giving it a second thought,” not realizing that as you do so, you are also signaling to yourself just how much money is sacrificed, among other things.
He cites an example, a spider weaving its web to be invisible so other insects won’t even realize they’re flying into that web.
“… In such a way that the harder you struggle once ensnared, the harder it becomes to escape,” the GQ correspondent stated. “The internet, I’ve realized, works exactly the same way.”
Ensnared
He wouldn’t have reached this point without realizing how completely ensnared he had been in this technological web, emphasizing how apps had already devoured his time and money. He said how his life has anchored upon these “conveniences,” forgetting the most important moments in his life.
He said that if he leaves X, he will lose his platform and money as a journalist. If he leaves Instagram he will lose his friends. The same way happens when he leaves DoorDash. How can he eat his dinner? He said.
“The weaker I was—hungover, sick, tired—the stronger the power of the apps was. I found myself lying on the couch watching hours of Instagram Reels while waiting for pizza,” he pointed out.
However, he also said that this was sad.
A few years ago, he chose to simply walk his way to a block to the deli for a sandwich, instead of ordering food from those apps.
“… I felt like I’d conquered Everest,” he stated.
However, he warned that if you wish to do this, you cannot have it both ways. Instead, you must decide the important things to you.
Can he succeed?
He might not. Today, UberEats has a whopping 88 million users. As of 2021, it operates in over 6,000 cities globally. This number has definitely increased. Meanwhile, DoorDash has approximately 37 million monthly active users, according to Statista.
Ordering food from these apps is incredibly easy, so Moskowitz may not succeed.