My Strange Addiction (Vinted Episode)

I will move out in a few weeks. For the fifth time, I’m preparing to up-sticks from my student abode and move a short distance across the city to my new home, carting my growing collection of items over bit by bit. Over years, I’ve watched it increase in size, increase in trips, until it reached the point of silliness. Prepared (for once) for this eventuality, this year I thought I’d try something different; a big clear-out months in advance, a free afternoon, and now, a box full of old clothes and accessories on Vinted. After a few weeks, my Vinted balance showed a very healthy figure.

So I thought I’d treat myself to a browse. And that’s when I felt something strange.

I’m well used to developing a cult-like following for a particular unusual form of social media. Once it was Snapchat, more often it’s LinkedIn, yet recently, I felt a strange pull towards Vinted in the same way. With a not-insignificant sum in the bank and a magpie’s attraction to pretty things, I began scrolling. Items favourited, added, bought and sold, the trips to the local shop growing in frequency. It’s an enjoyable time!

I’m not addicted either to Vinted or to spending in general; just under half of my bonanza balance is still tucked away in my Vinted wallet. But I began to notice that in spare periods, I’d be scrolling listings instead of my usual social media. Pages and pages of advertisements from bikinis to books were surveyed, a minority liked, and a minority of a minority sent speeding my way.

I was not addicted. I am not addicted. But I could feel a slight change. And I can see how people would be.

There’s an addictive element to Vinted’s nature, I think, one that isn’t quite like the regular forms of internet shopping as exists with Amazon, eBay or their contemporaries. The immediacy of internet shopping that Vinted exhibits, namely the unique nature of each listing that could be lost to another user at any moment, combined with the ‘gamification’ of hunting for a bargain and that a further scroll could reveal that lucrative and unknown treasure, & a set-up akin to social media provides the perfect crucible for addiction to fester. 

It’s a curious phenomenon that a digital version of the old car boot sales can become such an addictive vice. A second-hand clothes exchange that can become more important than the Stock Exchanges of the world combined, Vinted is perhaps one of the more unusual side-effects of the technological revolution – a site that’s biggest risk is being such an effective service. So how can you try to avoid becoming addicted? Maybe we should be looking to another addiction for the answer.

In recent years, gambling addiction has become more centred in the industry, with legislation now requiring disclosures & support information to be featured prominently in gambling advertisements, most notably in the form of imagery advising users to “know their limits”. This is the key. Besides my famed difficulty in finding items that I both like & would wear, when my Vinted balance began to tick up, I decided at that moment that I would only spend the funds that had grown organically through sales. By providing this fixed limit, & therefore transitioning my funds into a more finite, immutable resource, my scrolling & spending decisions became more focused and conservative.

Sometimes the simplest solutions can be the most effective.

Everybody loves a scroll, & Vinted is a fantastic marketplace to while away those extra minutes. But if you find yourself becoming more & more fixated on the wares on display, be sure to take notice, set limits & step away – there’ll always be more clothes on the rail!

Written by, Sophie Layton (she/her)