1. Rare plant crime, anti-vaxx protests & Super Mario 64 x Collingwood
Hi all,
Welcome to the first edition! I’m going to try to write a letter each week(-ish) with some original Australian online culture reporting.
I’m going to try to be as transparent as possible about my process. I hope a few of you can pick up a few tips and tricks along the way.
If you think anyone you know would like this, please forward it on to them or share it on social media!
RARE PLANT CRIME (ALLEGEDLY)
We’ve all been spending a lot of time inside recently. Confined to just living quarters, many of us have been getting into DIY home improvement. Indoor plants, in particular, have been very popular purchases from stores and in online marketplaces.
Rare, Tropical, and Indoor Plant BSS Australia (RTAIPBA) is one of those marketplaces. It’s a buy, sell, swap Facebook group with nearly 20,000 members (thanks to @stillreezy for bringing it to my attention).
The group’s members are mostly well behaved despite the group’s scale. And the stakes are high: some of these plants are really expensive. I’m not really a plant person, so I was surprised to see that people are regularly buying house plants for thousands of dollars. Variegation (different coloured leaves) is where the big bucks are at.
Some people are buying for personal use. Others are buying speculatively ; after all, you can make an infinite amount of cuttings from plants which you can hypothetically sell on. The group’s rules allow flipping plants but advise against it.
Since the lockdown started, the group has been going gangbusters. One of the group’s admins, Wolfgang, tells me that the group’s growth has nearly quadrupled since the pandemic. Prices have skyrocketed too (although there’s been complaints about prices for quite a while).
Wolfgang compares rare plant collecting to antique cars and stamps, but said the plants have additional benefits. “The vast majority of folks love plants for their beauty, their therapeutic values and to keep busy while being locked up at home and being bombarded by grim news stories about covid. 😉” he wrote.
But — and here’s the bit you’re all waiting for — there’s drama. There’s the normal stuff like people complaining about off-topic discussion (“my biggest pet peeve atm. People commenting F/follow on auction/sales posts or posting their opinions about the plants,” one user vented) or people trolling purchases. Some people have been breaking our strict biosecurity laws by sending plants interstate too.
The group has a love/hate relationship with Australia Post, probably tilted towards the “hate” side. It’s the most popular way to send plants, but group members often complain about the service. Wolfgang in particular has beef with them.
“The majority of issues are from Australia post mishandling parcels.. losing them, crushing boxes or taking a week to deliver with express post,” Wolfgang told me. “Now, there s a GREAT news story for you”
One thing I didn’t expect was complaints that people are creating unrealistic expectations for plant beauty by editing images of the cuttings.
Then there’s the outright scams. A common one is selling the Pink Congo philodendron, a plant that has pink leaves — but only while it’s treated with a special, secret chemical. One user calculated an eBay scammer selling dodgy seedings may have made $40,000.
But the ultimate sin is sending the wrong cuttings, or none at all. There’s one alleged scammer who is infamous in the group. In April, more than twenty people claimed that they paid her thousands of dollars for the wrong plant, a damaged plant or no plant at all.
Initially, an admin reached out to her to see if everything was OK. Then, it turned gruesome. People started sharing photographs of deliveries that can only be described as plant crime scenes. One person wrote “Some people don't deserve plants 🙇♀️”, the gravest insult you can write in a group like this.
(I’m leaving the person unnamed because I can’t afford a defo payout for a story about alleged plant crime. I did message her Facebook account to get her side of the story but never heard back from her).
Some group members tracked down screenshots of the alleged scammer purchasing cheap plants from Facebook neighbourhood groups which she would flip, mislabelled as other rare plants. One person said she’d been doing it for more than a year.
She’s been banned but her Facebook account is still active. Since then, the group rallied around each other. One member thanked an admin for collecting plants and making cuttings to send to people who’d been scammed. I found out about this when the group raised nearly $4,000 for that admin’s vet bill later on.
When I asked him about it, Wolfgang (who btw runs a tight ship: None of the other admins would talk to me!) played down the saga.
“There's scams everywhere and on every platform. I'm sure you're aware,” he said.
He’s right. Every group of this size has scams, flimflams, and ruses. If anything, RTAIPBA seems to be less chaotic than most.
But, the group seems to have collectively moved on from the Great Scam Of April 2020. Plant sales have returned. Nature is healing.
CONSPIRACY CORNER
A couple of weeks on from the Melbourne “Arrest Bill Gates” protests, there’s another set of protests organised for today (Saturday) in the states’ and territories’ capital cities.
Today’s are a bit same-same-but-different. They’ve been organised by the same small far-right YouTuber, but one of the main forces behind the last one, Fanos from 99% unite Main Group “it’s us or them”, has distanced himself from this.
The protests have the same smorgasbord of conspiracy theories associated with them?— they’re called “Wake Up Australia! Millions March Against Mandatory Vaccinations” — but are less about Australia’s lockdowns because, well, the lockdowns are being gradually lifted.
It’s hard to predict crowd sizes so I’m not going to speculate on how many people will be there. I will say that while the conspiracy groups and Telegram channels that I’m in have grown since then, the energy seems to have abated a bit.
I’m going to head to the Sydney one. I’ll let you know how it goes.
PS Conspiracy groups are NOT happy about ScoMo shuttering COAG.
This Super Mario 64 theme x Collingwood Football Club is making the nostalgia parts of my brain light up.
I am explicitly telling you NOT to visit this subreddit dedicated to helping people find and download kitsch Australian television because it is ILLEGAL.
This thread about tracking down an account that’s perving on Australian journalists’ private IG accounts has real “it was ……. Rebekah Vardy’s account” vibes. I am trying to find out the identity of the admin of this creepy, long-running forum. Please let me know if you want to help.
This made me lol
That’s it for now!
@cameronwilson
P.S. I am ALWAYS looking for tips for weird / interesting / important internet stuff. Please email or DM me if you see anything I might be interested in.
P.P.S ditto for jobs lol.