I’m not buying it

ENAR

Social buying seemed like such a wonderful concept at the beginning when my friends started talking about it three years ago. But it seems to me that after the novelty has worn off, so did a lot of the interest in such sites. It is one of the standard arguments of these sites that ‘everybody loves a bargain’. But that is only partially true when it comes to the Middle East because in this culture there is a general attitude that it is somehow cheap to try to save money through bargains. When they are complimented on a nicely fitting new blouse or fashionable pair of jeans, most of the people I know will emphasize how dear that item was and would not readily admit if they had snapped up a bargain. However, there is also the opposite trend where young professional Middle Easterners of my generation praise their bargains