In what I can solely assume is a carefully-laid scheme to make sure my long-term private and monetary demise, TikTok and Shopify introduced on Tuesday a brand new partnership that may enable customers to make in-app purchases immediately from the streaming platform for the primary time.

Shopify, an e-commerce platform, and TikTok, a short-form video app the place individuals run round on milk crates, mentioned that the brand new partnership will enable collaborating Shopify retailers so as to add procuring tabs to customers’ profiles, and also will be certain that product hyperlinks are nested inside relevant TikTok posts. According to the New York Times, Shopify is hoping to increase the characteristic to all of its retailers by this coming fall.

While TikTok’s bite-sized content material has lengthy offered a actually countless scroll of content material designed to waste your time, this would be the first time that TikTok has explicitly designed a pilot program to waste your cash. It’s a enterprise that type of makes greater than somewhat little bit of sense for a platform that has one thing to promote to everybody, be it e-book suggestions, make-up, cleansing merchandise or new meals gadgets. And though the characteristic’s pilot will completely allow in-app purchases for retailers, it may be a boon to creators down the road—assuming that they’d, in truth, be making commissions off of affiliate hyperlinks.

Clothing has earned a very sturdy foothold on the app in current months—look no additional than the current flurry of Alabama sorority girls posting OOTD, or “outfit of the day,” movies for proof—which Harley Finkelstein, Shopify’s president, instructed the Times is a symptom of social media changing into “the new town square” for customers on the lookout for assist or suggestions on which merchandise to purchase.

According to a survey that TikTok performed within the fall with the London market researcher Walnut Unlimited, there are greater than 4.6 billion views on the hashtag #tiktokmademebuyit—which does, admittedly, type of make you ponder whether or not there’s one thing to the concept that it is likely to be financially prudent for them to make it simpler so that you can purchase issues. Kylie Jenner, whose make-up and skincare model Kylie Cosmetics is reportedly one of many manufacturers that will probably be examined out within the pilot program, instructed the Times that the flexibility to make in-app purchases is integral to the success of her strains.

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“The ability to shop my products directly on these platforms is so important because that’s where our audience is going first,” Jenner, whose TikTok account at present has 34.9 million followers, mentioned.

Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook already supply in-app purchases, so it is sensible for TikTok to affix the group. It’s only a horrible improvement for me each personally and financially.