I am looking to buy an office chair. One with lower back padding and neck support and all the things my stiff wooden chair cannot do for me. I find one on Facebook Marketplace (originally $400, now $60) and the seller gives me an address and time for the next day.
I expect a home, but when I arrive there is a business plaque on the door. Psychologist. My brain starts ticking over very quickly—is this a setup? An introduction, even though I’m already in therapy? I really need to not have my back ache when I write, so I step inside. The psychologist is wearing gym clothes and explains that he’s selling the chair as the left arm wobbles; he doesn’t want his patients to be uncomfortable. I want to laugh—I will be sitting in this chair writing about my own mental illness, embracing discomfort yet more comfortable than before. I hand him the cash and wheel the chair out to my little yellow car.
Later, at home and writing, I wonder at all the thoughts that have been shared from this chair.
*
In March 2020, I spend a lot of time scrolling through Marketplace. I am at home and my movements are restricted to walks around the neighbourhood and aimless drives. I feel the heaviness of only seeing the same things, the same houses. My eyes crave something, anything, different, and Marketplace becomes a window into other people’s lives. I don’t buy anything, just look. I become fascinated by the history of objects but also the way they are contained on a platform like Facebook.
I become fascinated by the history of objects but also the way they are contained on a platform like Facebook.
In the ads I see both the items and glimpses of the homes that contain them. A wool rug with a black cat curled up in its corner; a mirror capturing an outstretched iPhone-gripping hand. This is not even considering those who model the items: a man spread out in a large garden chair, a child with an emoji over their face playing on a plastic John Deere tractor. Most interesting to me are unrelated photos accidentally included in the listings. Moments of privacy stolen, posted. For sale.
At first, I am surprised what people message me about, the intimacy of what they tell me. I am not used to it; Mum has always been the one in our family from who strangers seem to seek comfort. I think it is her small frame, kind face. But on Marketplace, people tell me things. They can’t pick it up today: they’re waiting on their daughter to give birth. A third child. They don’t know how they will handle this new life. I see a wedding dress (I am not married, and will not marry, but still I look) which explains in no uncertain terms why it is being listed.
*
I learn that the act of looking doesn’t end when you buy the object. I buy a wooden coffee table ($80) as a surprise for my partner. It slides open to reveal a chess board. After I bring it home and wipe it down—familiarising myself with every surface—I see a name written in large pencil on its underside. I notice the way the drawers on its side stick, not on rollers but wood alone. The chessboard is placed around the wrong way; the bottom left square is white, not black. I begin to think it was a woodworking project made for a certification. But the name on the underside is not the name of the person who I transferred money to. As I play chess or place a cup of coffee on its surface, I wonder at how it came to be, and how it made its way to me.
*
When I sell something, I start to think I am letting that person into my home. I am photographing an outgrown dog kennel in my garden or trying to artfully place a juicer on my coffee table, green ottoman in the background (another Marketplace find: $125, a splurge). Even if I meet buyers away from my house in a nearby park—something I do for a time after repeated messages from a man who said I had a ‘pretty smile’—I am sharing the pieces of objects that have served me. Ray-Bans that I somehow developed an allergy to; a crappy Kmart bar fridge that was the only thing that would fit in the tiny townhouse I rented for two years; the bike I learnt to ride on in my early 20s. These objects are storied; pieces of me, my past—and in selling them, my future.
When I sell something, I start to think I am letting that person into my home, sharing the pieces of objects that have served me.
*
I notice that the times I drive to the wealthiest suburbs—ones I didn’t know existed—that I am always buying, never picking up giveaways (those, I find, are from my neighbours). I buy a light ($50) at a house that takes me a minute of walking from the gate to reach the front door. As I hand over a crumpled note, the man tells me he’s in trouble for selling it to me so cheaply; I wonder why he bothers selling at all.
*
It is interesting to me that this second-hand economy exists on Facebook. Not just Marketplace, which is specifically created for this purpose, but the buy/swap/sell, ‘buy nothing’ or ‘good karma’ groups—alternatives to buying new or spending more. I wonder what it means that communities are being formed within a platform like Facebook that leverages people’s data for profit. We post photos of our things and homes, not just for our ‘friends’, or people in our community, but for an algorithm buying and selling something else entirely.
One day, I click on a listing for what I think is a speaker. The image is a close up of mesh, the name a brand I don’t recognise. I flick through the photos and realise I am looking at a baby bassinet listing. The soft mesh that I had assumed was a speaker cover is a basket to keep a baby safe. This click means weeks of bassinet listings fill my feed. The algorithm fixates on items where a baby might sleep. I start to think about the damage an algorithm, even on a service like Marketplace, can do.
*
I look at listings that are not for objects, but warnings. Beware Scam. Scam Alert [siren emoji]. The ads are screen shots of other Marketplace listings. A grand piano, listed for free but with a later request to pay for ‘shipping’. Star Wars Lego that never comes. I wonder what it means that a platform both perpetuate scams and advertise their risks. Even in ‘community’ spaces, it seems responsibility is placed on the individual to protect themselves from harm.
*
Marketplace is an act of looking, but also a language. I send listings to friends. Not just things they would like—that, too—but the supremely weird. A frog phone; chairs made to look like bodies wearing lingerie; a single-person sauna for $4000. We wonder how these things came to be and who are the people that own them.
Even in ‘community’ spaces, it seems responsibility is placed on the individual to protect themselves from harm.
When I scroll beyond the weird, I think of the things my friends and family need. I send them listings that might fit. I think of their homes, their objects. It is an act of care that I find myself performing with frequency only on Marketplace. I wonder if this is because a listing can be messaged in a few clicks. Communication sits easily with purchase, and I find myself sending out these messages before self-consciousness has a chance to set in.
*
One afternoon I pick up garden rocks listed for free. As my partner and I carry them one by one to the car, the woman offers to hold onto my dog’s lead. We adopted Skia, only a few months old, a couple of weeks ago from the RSPCA. We’re still working on building up to spending hours apart, so the woman says she will stay close to us, but as soon as I pass the lead to her, she insists on taking Skia for a walk in the backyard. As she closes the gate behind her, I feel a sinking dread.
Yet when she returns five minutes later, Skia is happy, and the woman hands me a pack of balls. She explains that her ageing kelpie had recently died (she also gives me a card for a vet who euthanises at home). Before I go, she thanks me for bringing Skia along. Her eyes water.
