It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that like many people possessed of a smartphone, I spend hours on it most evenings scrolling while pretending to watch TV. But it isn’t Instagram that’s got me, nor TikTok. It’s Facebook.
Yes Gen Z, Facebook may seem as ancient as water, a social media platform that only dinosaurs join for niche chat groups like I Hate Mayonnaise. But it has its uses, specifically remembering birthdays (admittedly of people I used to know and am no longer in touch with), and increasingly gawping at other people’s tat.
Facebook launched its Marketplace arm in 2016, allowing users to list things to buy and sell locally. While take-up was slow at first, new HMRC measures rolled out at the start of this year, whereby the tax office could investigate individual sales and potentially issue a bill, spooked sellers who fled eBay, Vinted, Depop and Etsy et al and turned to Marketplace to set out their stalls instead.
Selling on Facebook is a grey area since the site doesn’t handle financial transactions: instead buyers and sellers hustle, haggle and arrange collection details between themselves.
This can be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, clutter gets replaced with a tidy stack of cash; on the other, you might find yourself wandering around Oxford Circus with a bag and asking random blokes if they’re the Phil from Dagenham you’ve been messaging about your old lampshade.
My selling adventures reached a new level of peculiar last week when I found myself selling an inflatable moon chair to anti-vaccine activist Piers Corbyn
My selling adventures on Marketplace reached a new level of peculiar last week when I found myself outside a Tesco Express, selling an inflatable moon chair to anti-vaccine activist Piers Corbyn, brother of Jeremy. Since this took place in the aftermath of Glastonbury, I wondered if I was in some sort of post-festival fever dream.
Marketplace window shopping is a more sedate endeavour. Shopline UK says more than a million items are listed on FB Marketplace UK every day, making it a vast online boot sale where you can seek out the weird, wonderful and downright disturbing from the comfort of your sofa instead of picking your way through a grey car park on a Sunday morning, cradling a Costa for warmth.
It’s a haven for the incurably nosy. On my RSI-risking sessions, I’ve seen: a pair of coffins, used (as props, it turns out); the hood of a VW Mk2 Golf GTI converted into a BBQ (badly); and a paperweight of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as part octopus (sure, why not?) made from concrete.
The pendulum swing in listing quality delivers virtual whiplash. One post for a rare print is succeeded by amateur artwork so bungled it looks cursed. There are family heirlooms and flat-pack chipboard, delicate wedding china and novelty shot glasses, hand-painted alligator teapots and upcycling failures optimistically marketed as ‘artisan’.
There is stuff so obviously rubbish that to put a price on it would be a joke — oil-stained scrunchie, anyone? Then there are items any sensible person would know are better off bought new. If you’re hunting for treasure, focus your searches on the capital’s affluent enclaves: entire Le Creuset collections are going for peanuts in the south-west.
Behind every listing is a tale, sometimes regaled in the description but often left to the wilds of your mind. Who says tech murders the imagination?
The single best thing I’ve been tempted by? A real witness stand that I seriously considered despite a) not having any way to bring it home and b) nowhere near enough space to do it, ahem, justice. Middling issues sure, but oh, the potential to take drinks at mine to a new level. Bring down the gavel, I’m sold.
Sequels season in cinemas
DOES anyone else have a serious case of on-screen deja vu? Old-school blockbusters are flooding back in sequel form by the popcorn bucket-load.
Already online are new versions of Road House and Mean Girls (both faultless to begin with). Meanwhile Gladiator 2 (with the golden boy of the moment Paul Mescal) and Twister 2 (starring his Normal People co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones) are due to be released shortly. And now I hear Practical Magic and — horror! — The Devil Wears Prada are billed for sequels too.
Anyone who saw the utter turkey that was Coming 2 America knows to tread with caution when attempting to defibrillate much-loved classics. Where are all the fresh ideas, the new concepts, in Hollywood? No wonder cinemas are on a knife-edge.
