Bill Maher Says Online Shopping Is Destroying The Environment & Making Us “Lonely” On ‘Real Time’

Bill Maher dedicated his “New Rules” segment of last night’s episode of Real Time With Bill Maher to a seemingly random but somewhat relevant topic to us all: online shopping. The HBO host made some strong arguments for why people should start going back to stores rather than ordering everything on the internet.

In typical fashion, Maher ragged on “millennials” and “gen z” for their contributions, but really blamed everyone for feeding this problem which is destroying the environment and making us “lonely.” You can watch the segment dubbed “Shop Making Sense” above.

Maher began, “since America’s such an incredibly f**ked up place right now, let’s scale back our goal of making it great again and settle for let’s just make the mall great again. Just start with that, and get a W.”

“Because online shopping is killing us. Psychologically, and environmentally,” Maher continued.

Maher noted that Americans have had the mail order option for decades now, referring to the Sears catalogue (which he says “was Amazon, just Amazon that never grew”) but it has only gotten much worse in recent years.

He pondered why this was the case, concluding “I don’t know, but lately I’ve been seeing a lot of stories about how isolated, and lonely people are, maybe it has something to do with that.”

“Marketplaces have always been the center of society,” Maher added. “Yes, ours was a little tacky, but it was better than this,” Maher at this point referring to a pile of empty cardboard boxes.

“Turns out ordering online is way more eco-unfriendly than driving to the store ever was. How could it not be, considering that Americans now shop by the most inefficient means humanly possible: Since we can’t get off our ass and see how something feels, we order nine, and send back 8,” he said.

Maher also joked about the way people used to shop, reminding viewers that shoppers “made these things called shopping lists.” Now, he says, online shopping is “where robots, and people who are treated like robots” pack everything up in overly large, wasteful boxes.

He added that only 14% of the plastic packaging that the world uses is recyclable, in addition to all the energy and fuel that is burned while shipping goods directly to consumers. bringing people their goods on a per-person, per place basis.

His final message to us all: “Go out and play. Go to the mall. Our social skills are atrophying while we one-click ourselves into oblivion. Amazon’s in its prime, but you’re wasting yours.”

You can check out the full clip above.

Stream Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO Max