Before I begin, I’d just like to say a huge thank you to Sally Georgina Cronin of Smorgasbord Blog Magazine for featuring my latest novel Charybdis and one of the excellent reviews it’s received. I really appreciate it and you can read it here! And now on to the lunacy.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace lately, looking for cool miniatures to use for my tiny rooms. Here’s the latest room that I made:

It’s in our guest bedroom and it IS our guest bedroom (or at least a close approximation), which makes me feel so meta. Or mini-meta as the case may be. I can’t seem to control the Marketplace algorithm though—I want it to show me all the miniature things, but once—JUST ONCE—I clicked on an ad for a mobile home and my ‘suggested for you’ feed is literally all mobile homes, campers, and tiny homes. Is the universe telling me to downsize?
At any rate, I’ve seen a few really strange ads in the past couple of weeks. This person who posted this one REALLY wanted to make sure that people understood exactly what it was:

And of course, my first instinct was to immediately message with “Is this a bag for a man? I would like to purchase it for my husband, as he is a man.” Why would anyone be THAT worried about the gender of the person potentially buying their bag? Anytime I post anything, my main concern is that people don’t ask stupid questions like, “Where are you located?” when I clearly state in the ad EXACTLY where I’m located.
While the above ad is weird in its own way, this next ad freaked me out. One would think that when one was trying to rent a private room, that the picture would be OF the room, not of some dude giving off a definite serial killer vibe. Of course, the ad says there are 18 more pictures but I was too scared to look. Also, I put the bar over his eyes to protect his identity, but they were HAUNTED.

And I don’t know where this room is, but I wouldn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to discover it’s not actually PRIVATE after all.
Finally, if you think the last ad was freaky, what the hell is this one?

Is it The Blair Witch Barbie? If you’re trying to sell a doll, why would you pose it FACING the wall? I mean, I know Hallowe’en is coming, but then shouldn’t the picture be more like this:

And speaking of bizarre things that will freak you out, yesterday I went over to the local fall fair. It’s a typical fall fair with competitions in different categories like best quilt, antique stumper, largest pumpkin, and whatnot. And there’s also a school competition where the students at the local public school are given categories of their own to enter. I was having a lovely time checking out the paintings, best popsicle stick structure and so on, and then I came across this:

Maybe the guy who thought that category up is the same one with the room for rent…
I’ve said it for years… People are weird. Now we have definitive proof.
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I’ve been doing empirical studies for years!
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Sadly, what creeps me out the most in this post is the text on the Barbie images that says “Vintage 1994.” That is just so wrong that my freshman year in college is now considered vintage…
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Oh I hadn’t even noticed that! 1994 was just yesterday, wasn’t it?!
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Literally yesterday! There gets to be a point in your life where no time period you can actually remember could have possibly been longer than 20 years ago…
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I still think the 80s were just a decade ago 🤣🤣
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Love your miniature work Suzanne and thank you for the mention… and as for those adverts.. some definitely very freaky… ♥
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I have a couple of cloth satchels I use for carrying journals, pens, and other stuff. Then I read a bizarre screed by a guy who said “Men should carry hard briefcases.” He said only a hard briefcase was good for hiding things from wives. I felt sorry for that guy’s wife, if he had one. The only thing I’d consider hiding in my satchels would be that cursed Barbie.
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Remember Seinfeld? It’s not a purse—it’s a “European accessory”. 🤣
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Dioramas, pre or post crimes, pre by the criminals, post by the cops, are you planning a caper against yourself? Or preparing the scenario reenactment for the cops after the fact? Should Ken be worried?
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That private room advertisement could definitely be more clear. Is it for a man or a woman? They could take a page from the tote bag advertiser. 🙂
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Yes, like ‘lady room (for woman)’, must be single lady😳
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Looks like Barbie is in timeout.
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For being very, VERY naughty.
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Nobody puts Barbie in the corner.
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🤣🤣🤣
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Spook season coming early😳
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You said it!
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The advertisement for the “Lady Bag Purse” is hilarious. Like you said, who cares who ends up using it? (I must say, though, it does look like a nice handbag.)
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You can have it as long as you’re a lady woman😉
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and here I’m reading this shortly before bedtime…
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Sorry!
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😝
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I think that Lady bag purse for women looks like a tool bag, Suzanne. I can definitely see if filled with my husband’s collection of screwdrivers and drill bits. Hehe.
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Oh, I’ve never seen such oddities before. I’m looking in the wrong pla.
Barbie had me stumped, indeed why face her to the wall!?
is the doll life size as she is next to the stairs she looks big?
Then again if she turns around is she ready for Halloween 👻, faceless or face painted?
thanks for the humour
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Yes, she seems life-size, which is even worse!
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Whoa. I sure am glad I use an ad blocker on Facebook.
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Oh, this is Marketplace–you have to go to it specifically!
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I understand! I just can’t stand ads on social media.
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That doll I don’t like dolls anyway and I totally agree about the ads when you google something they drive me crazy I’m scared to search for anything unless I really want it 🙂
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I don’t think any of the big social media platforms care what you /want/, they just need an excuse to display ads they’re paid to push. Isn’t it odd that despite all our so-called technological advances, none of the Tech Bros have worked out that no-one likes ads, that no-one [apart from you] looks at ads, and that it’s a really, really bad way to try to make money?
Oh wait…the Tech Bros already know, it’s the companies that pay the ad networks that pay the Tech Bros that still think ads sell products… my bad.
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The Tech Bros aren’t very astute, sadly. Their algorithms are simplistic and downright annoying!
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Amen to that. I guess they think that if they annoy us long enough, something will filter through no matter how many times we hit the ‘Skip’ button.
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