If you are one of the fortunate, the lucky, those older-than-Gen-Z still using Facebook in New Zealand, you may have been blessed with a sighting of a simple, one word Facebook post. If you haven’t yet, I got you bb.
The post is from a seemingly defunct page called Marquee for Hire. The last post on the page was from April 2019, and before that, a few posts from October 2018. It looks to have been set up in September 2018. There are only a handful of posts altogether, and a couple of pictures of marquees. Ordinary and uneventful.
Then there’s the deal. A single word that has nearly a thousand shares. Ads don’t usually get four thousand plus comments and thousands more likes. There’s just something magic about this one.
Sponsored ads don’t show the publishing date, so we can’t know exactly when this was first posted, but there are comments on the post from three years ago. Probably safe to assume it was posted around 2018-2019, since nothing has been done on the page since.
The journalist in me wants to conduct an investigation; try and get in touch with whoever it is who set up this ad and forgot about it. There’s a phone number and an email address on the Facebook page.
The rest of me, the somewhat-nihilistic me that revels in absurdity and figures we may as well get what delight we can at the end of the world, absolutely won’t conduct an investigation, because I don’t want to ruin it. Someone out there is still being charged for this ad, years down the line, and far be it from me to remind them of its existence and have them cancel it.
Facebook doesn’t have much to offer us anymore, and let’s not get started on the housing crisis and climate change. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining the moment of levity - of community, even! - when this inexplicable ad pops up again in people’s feeds as it makes its way around the Facebook sun.
So in lieu of anything resembling information, I present to you a collection of comments and reviews from Deal afficionados. Enjoy this moment of distraction from the rollback of reproductive rights and the ever-increasing cost of vegetables.