People & Society

Online Shopper Had Her Tampons Substituted With Mushrooms, Causing Twitter To Share Their Own Shopping Fails

Nov 14, 2022, 6:13 PM

A person using their credit card to complete an online purchase.

Unsplash | rupixen.com

We might think that online shopping is as easy as the click of a mouse or your fingers tapping on a screen, but that would be asking too much, apparently. If you frequently buy food or other necessities online for pickup or delivery, you've probably felt the sting of confusion when your store's shopper (or its AI system) substituted one item with something totally different.

That happened to one shopper who shared the hilariously confusing shopping fail on Twitter. While plenty of people either laughed along or complained about AI and shoppers' inaccuracies, a surprising amount shared fails of their own.

The User, Who Goes by AskAubry, Tweeted About Her Strange Substitution in a Now-Viral Thread

"Hi Walmart, I don't think mushrooms will work," Aubry wrote in the initial Tweet. She accompanied the post with an image of Walmart asking if she would want whole white mushrooms as a substitution for tampons.

You don't even need a uterus to know that substitution makes no sense.

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Inspired by the Original Tweet's Absurdity, Many Users Shared Their Strange Shopping Fails

A Tweet that reads, "How do I get Instacart to stop assigning dudes under 30 to my orders? Chad just earnestly queried whether I'd like him to replace my out-of-stock tampons with adult diapers.

twitter | @BabyFishMouth5

As it turns out, a lot of people have had similar experiences while shopping online. And not just with random product substitutions of any kind. As this user showed, it seems pretty difficult for some people to understand that tampons and other period products aren't easily substituted.

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But It Seems Like Shopping Algorithms Miss the Mark Pretty Often, Too

"My confusion comes mostly from Amazon recommendations. I put a package of socks in the cart and it asks if I would like a foldable solar panel. ????"

twitter | @MichaelAHiener

Other users complained that websites like Amazon use AI to recommend seemingly unrelated items to shoppers. This user, for instance, was given foldable solar panels as a recommendation when he was just trying to buy socks from Amazon.

It seems the shopping giants have their work cut out for them when it comes to fine-tuning the shopping experience for their customers.

Some of These Tweets Really Make You Wonder How These AI Systems Are Getting It So Wrong

"Instacart algorithm is wild. I requested for English cucumber replacement and their recommendation is cucumber Vagisil."

twitter | @larryburb

For another user, the Instacart recommendations for substituting a cucumber was cucumber-scented Vagisil, as well as soap and body wash. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't put any of those things in a salad.

As hilarious as these shopping fails are, they also kind of show that technology has a long way to go before it can completely perfect the art of making us buy more stuff online. Which, to be honest, isn't really all that bad...

h/t BoredPanda