I’ve Been Banned for Life!

I have been banned from Bonac Yard Sale. For the few of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, this is a facebook group where you can sell just about anything without having to go through the trouble of having a yard sale. It’s kind of like craigslist, but just for East Hampton, and all the minutia is jumbled together—we’re talking baby clothes, office furniture, car parts—the stuff we really need to be wasting our time trolling the Internet for.

Some of my friends have serious Bonac addictions, the kind of addictions that are beginning to affect their marriages. You want to ruin your husband’s day? Force him to drive to the ends of the earth to meet up with a random person who is letting go of a gently used cashmere sweater for $25.

My friend Jessie is selling baby clothes and toys by the piece for something like $1 an item, and there are people driving out to Montauk to get them. Another friend is starting a business, restoring old furniture that she finds on Bonac, and as a result her husband can no longer find his living room.

The term “I found it on Bonac” is a new colloquialism that everyone suddenly understands, the way we know that CfAR means “citizens for access rights” and other completely obvious things like that. There are more than 3,000 members, which is shocking because I didn’t know that many people lived in Bonac. And I am no longer one of them because I have been banned.

The exchange went something like this. A friend of mine needs a new alternator for his truck so he is selling his kayak. He posted a picture of himself in the kayak, and I couldn’t resist calling him out for selling himself on Bonac in a comment. We had a bit of a thinly veiled sexual innuendo conversation going on, because we are both, obviously, brilliantly hilarious. The kayak rides nice. The kayak has a hard top. How big is the kayak? You get the idea.

Ten minutes later a facebook administrator—you know, one of the people that “run the show” over at Bonac—erased my comments and left my friend the kayak seller a long winded public shaming on his inability to follow directions and rules. Because apparently, there are rules, or more specifically, 484 words of “guidelines” crafted by said administrator, which we were too lazy to read, and we had violated several of them.

The administrator said something along the lines of “this is a yard sale, not an auction” although I can’t say for sure because I have been banned and am no longer privy to what goes on around Bonac. Apparently my suggestion to “make an offer” on my buddy’s incredibly phallic kayak was taken completely the wrong way.

She or he—the person had one of those vaguely androgynous names, as I remember—also took the time to “tag” my friend in the post—so all his friends would be immediately alerted to the news that he did something bad on Bonac, which I thought was a little unnecessarily mean.

So I tagged the administrator in a post, offering a need-based discount on a sense of humor for sale. And that’s how I got banned.

It’s too bad because I was seriously thinking about making an offer on that Barbie dream car. I’m sure its been snapped up by now. I think the kayak is still for sale, though. If you’re interested, I could put you in touch with the guy.
Just inbox me.