Indeedy. If you want to see and experience boredom of the paint-drying
variety, check out the Polycell Home Page. http://www.polycell.co.uk.
In fact, to be quite honest, check out most of the retail web
sites and experience similar. I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow
description of the sort of retail sites that are online and what
can be bought from them. You can do that for yourselves by going
to 'The UK's most authoritative, fully searchable database of
the world's best (retail) web sites' http://www2.emap.com/review/Shopping.htm
Suffice to say, most of what they're flogging is either (a) tack
that no-one except a devotee of the Franklin Mint would be interested
in; or (b) the sort of stuff that, although normal enough, no
rational person would dream of buying online, sight unseen: cars,
clothes, houses and jewellery, for instance. Cyberspace lacks
that essential 'touch and feel'.
Fact: the Internet is too slow to be taken seriously as a shopping
medium. The majority of the online goods are those cranky things
you find in shops like Times Past or the Innovations Catalogue.
Even where they're not, you get the feeling that the retailer
is only advertising them on the Internet to appear 'hip' and appeal
to the fringe 'yoof' sector. I doubt know, in fact that they
don't make many sales this way, nor do they expect to. Anyway,
for an incisive comment on Internet shopping as a whole, I can
do no better than point you to the Bovine Scathalia website (http://www.adnetsol.com/bovine/bovine.html):
'The chance to buy 100% bullshit.'