Would aliens think online shopping is a human ritual?

Yes—if aliens observed us only from the outside and didn’t understand human economics, online shopping could easily look ritual-like.

Anthropologists usually describe rituals as repetitive, patterned behaviors that carry shared cultural meaning and symbolic value. Online shopping has some features that could fit that impression: repeated scrolling, tapping, comparing items, a kind of “offering” of payment before receiving anything, waiting for delivery, and the familiar unboxing moment when the package is finally opened and inspected.

There are also collective shopping events, like Black Friday or Prime Day, that could seem especially ceremonial to an outsider because many people participate at once in a highly standardized way.

So the best answer is: yes, to an outside observer, online shopping could seem ritual-like, even though humans experience it mainly as ordinary commerce. How alien observers would interpret it would still depend on how they understand our culture and technology.