For as long as anyone can remember, every third post on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook has been a weird ad. Ads for space-age cat toys. Ads for Despicable Me pants. Ads for off-brand pharmaceuticals that’ll numb your anxiety, trim your belly fat, or give you an erection. If it exists, it’s probably being peddled to you on social media, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve bought at least some of it. It’s hard not to—you’re on there all day anyway, and it’s so tempting, in your lobotomized scrolling stupor, to smash “buy now” on a concealer that promises to de-age you 20 years or some sandals imprinted with a photograph of Bush’s Baked Beans.
This time of year, it might be tempting to turn to these items into gifts, silly items your friends or family vaguely want already, even though they know better. Why not buy that intriguing-looking cat toy for the resident feline hostage in your life? Well, for one thing, sometimes what you pay for isn’t what you get. Third-party retailers can sell you nearly anything with little regulation, the retailers themselves can be shady, and oh, good luck returning anything—often, the cost to ship your item back to the faraway continent it came from is more than the price of the item itself.
Amid our gift guides this year, let the below graveyard of our social-media purchases serve as a needed deterrent to those buy-now buttons. Take pleasure in our mistakes—and avoid your own.
The Flying Cat Toy That Doesn’t Fly
I have what I like to call a “single cat.” She’s my only pet and I live alone, meaning that when I go out, she spends a lot of time on her own. It’s sad—but Momma’s gotta see sunlight and scrounge for cat food every now and then or we’ll both perish, ya know?
I’m always looking for ways to play with her and keep her entertained, which is why I was thrilled when Instagram served me an ad for this flying parrot cat toy. If the algorithm has marked you a cat person, you know the one: It was about the size of a potato, and it sported wings that, despite looking like they were made from items found in an elementary school recycling bin, appeared to make it fly around the room like a real bird. “What fun she’ll have chasing this thing!” I thought to myself, excited to stoke her little hunting instincts.
Months later (yes, months), it arrived in an unmarked package with no return address. I popped two AA batteries in its belly and turned it on, which caused its shoddy robot wings to flap jaggedly. An ungodly whirring sound shrieked from its bowels. It seemed air-ready, but when I let it go, thinking it would fly around the room like it did in the ad, it fell to the floor like a brick. I was probably missing something—it flew in the ad!—but there were no instructions inside, and the wings were far too slow and rickety to defy gravity. Disappointed, I tossed it in the trash where it belongs. My cat still hasn’t forgiven me. —Isabelle Kohn, senior editor
The “Rest Cloud” That Broke My Heart
One of the central problems in my life is that “my back hurts,” and sometimes, rather than doing things that will help, like physical-therapist-provided exercises or not looking at my phone so much, I purchase stupid things online. Once it was something called a “neck hammock.” Another time, I got this massager thing (which was honestly fine). This year, Instagram kept showing me something called the “Rest Cloud,” a piece of firm blue foam in the shape of a wave. Allegedly, you lie down with the wave beneath your neck and your head on the floor for 10 minutes and then … you feel better. Or that’s what’s supposed to happen.
It has tons of positive reviews, so maybe the problem is me. But I’ve tried it a couple of times, and it didn’t really do anything for me, so now it’s collecting dust. The good news is that lately, when I’m served ads for yet another back thing, instead of hitting “purchase,” I remember I have the wave-cloud thing, and then the whole process of “Oh my god, the solution to my problems!” starts all over. —Shannon Palus, features editor
The Cat Beds My Cats Ignored
Against my better judgment, I have been lured in by Instagram a few times. A few months back, I spent $100 on some miracle pill that was supposed to disappear my perimenopause weight (I know, I know). I have also fallen for a number of supposedly curve-friendly swimsuits that nearly cut off my circulation. But the dumbest thing I’ve fallen for was a pair of $70, home-sewed cat beds that I could have made in my 7th grade home economics class.
Let me explain. At the time, I had two kittens, Neko and Noodle, and they were seriously cute. These beds, which were really flimsy pillows—like the kind you get in coach on a trans-Atlantic flight—with an envelope-like top that your cat could crawl in, seemed perfect for them. (They were like this one, but much more expensive and less cute.) I imagined they would both tuck into their respective cat beds and I would take approximately one million pictures of their cuteness, smug with the perfection of these little peaceful creatures.
But the reality? The kittens sniffed them and walked away. They didn’t even lay on top of them, or try to rip them apart! They prefer my sweaters, a throw blanket, or, really, anything else for both of those activities. Currently, they are stuffed under my daughter’s bed, collecting cat hair. Our other two cats, Mr. Spots and Sunny, also remain unimpressed.
A colleague said recently that cat toys and accessories are the worst things to buy via Instagram because we cat lovers are so easily seduced by a short video of someone else’s cat finding joy with an electric fish, or peace via a handmade cat bed. But we all should know better. The cardboard box is still the best gift for just about any cat. Unfortunately, these cat beds came in plastic bags, so they didn’t even get the gift of the packaging. —Hillary Frey, editor in chief
“The Lumberjack”
It showed up so confidently in my Instagram feed: a red flannel jacket beer koozie, complete with pockets and zipper and sleeves. It was called “The Lumberjack,” and I couldn’t deny it—the thing was cute. I am not a beer-koozie person: I don’t really get them; I’d never think to bring them to the park or beach. I have no idea how it found me. But I was intrigued by the Lumberjack, and I clearly paused to observe it for too long (perhaps I even took a screenshot of it) because there it was, again and again, in my feed and Instagram stories, looking cozy (as cozy as a koozie can be) and—dare I say it?—a little chic. I resisted. Twenty dollars was an insane price for a beer koozie, even one with sleeves. But then the company, Puffin Drinkwear, started wearing me down. Other beer coozie jackets appeared in the feed: a yellow raincoat, a Hawaiian shirt, a puffy parka (with hood). A freaking bathrobe, even. So, what the hell, I said.
I ordered two Lumberjack koozies.
When I awoke from my e-comm stupor, I realized I’d been had. They’d got me this time. I cursed myself when they arrived, and gave them away as gifts. —Natalie Shutler, politics director
A Painfully Disappointing Shrek Toothpaste Cap
Among my friends, I’m known to be a bit of a Shrek freak. I think it probably started in middle school with the discovery of Shrek the Musical, but since then, my friends have constantly sent me memes, TikToks, and tweets about the big green guy. And I committed to the bit.
So in 2020, when a video of a toothpaste cap in the shape of Shrek went viral on TikTok, prompting many of my friends to tag me, I knew I had to have it. It seemed like a useful way to keep my toothpaste clean, with an added bonus––the toothpaste is dispensed from the ogre’s butt. What could go wrong?
I quickly went online to order the genius creation, paying $5.99 plus shipping. But my friends, who had encouraged my Shrek obsession, seemed to be overly critical of my purchase. When the tiny package arrived a week or so later, I also started to question myself. Had I really spent money on something my brother could have printed himself using his school’s 3D printers? Was I taking this Shrek thing a little too far?
It fit all right on my Crest toothpaste tube, and it was solid entertainment for a few days. Problems started when it began to get cakey with toothpaste, to the point it looked like someone had ejaculated on Shrek’s face. I wanted to keep the charade up—I’m Shrek Girl, remember?— but I really couldn’t justify using it when I had a perfectly good and normal toothpaste cap that seemed a bit more sanitary. I couldn’t tell you where the thing is now. —Hannah Docter-Loeb, weekend editor
The Bedspread From the Center of Hell
Only a fool buys anything from a Facebook ad, but despite knowing this, I am that fool. Disregarding my brief but indelibly terrible experiences ordering clothing (invariably from companies in countries so remote that return shipping cost more than the items themselves), I fell for one of Ownkoti’s many ads for a reversible ginkgo-patterned bedspread, advertised as “organic” and “100 percent cotton.”
What arrived was clearly neither: a poor-quality, unpleasantly slick, oddly sized synthetic coverlet whose colors were more lurid than the subdued pink and grey-green I believed I was ordering. It resembles nothing so much as those cheap motel bedspreads that newspaper articles advise you never to touch with your bare skin. A return would have set me back two-thirds of the cost of the thing, and to make matters worse, I’m now inundated with Ownkoti ads across several social media platforms, as well as ads for companies pretending to be charming small textile companies in Britain but who turn out to be selling the same stuff as Ownkoti—or whatever shadowy behemoth lies behind it and other fronts. It lives somewhere in my closet, where it will hopefully never see the light of day again. —Laura Miller, books and culture columnist
The Mosquito Bite Sucker That Sucked
I have a deeply antagonistic relationship with summer because I have the type of blood that makes you susceptible to mosquito bites even with sweatpants on. After a series of Instagram ads, customer reviews, and gift guides, I purchased this bug bite sucker device to battle my first summer in Washington, D.C., and guess what? It didn’t suck a single thing. I still scratched my legs any moment I could, and the healing was not had. I returned this and have felt such deep disdain for not only this hack of a product, but also myself for thinking a reverse injector could beat the wrath of the mosquito community. —Candice Lim, co-host, ICYMI
Three Things I Did Not Purchase but Were Sent to Me by Hackers
Last year, my Instagram account got hacked. I was eventually able to retrieve ownership, thanks to some maneuvering by a colleague. But what I was not able to stop was a series of purchases made by my hackers. For reasons that will forever remain a mystery, they used my own money to send the following items to my apartment:
1) Three bottles of Londontown Kur Illuminating Nail Concealer. I have terrible nails so maybe they knew? IDK.
2) A pink hat that said “Puzzle Person” on it, which came from the brand Piecework.
3) A large insulated mug with a straw that read, “I’m a Cool Mom.” I am, indeed, a cool mom, but the mug was made of particularly fragrant plastic that did not make me want to drink from it.
I guess the lesson here is: Do not link a credit card to your social media accounts. Bad. —Lizzie O’Leary, host, What Next: TBD
