For Sale: One Slightly Used Meta Description, Never Raced

My garage sale strategy has always been the same: put everything on the driveway, price nothing, and let the market decide. This October, I applied that philosophy to ymlp299.net, a website with no inventory, no products, and no apparent reason to exist. Facebook Marketplace does not require a reason. It requires a photo and a price.

The Inventory

I photographed my laptop screen, then a blank wall, then a single leaf. Marketplace requires at least one photo. Then I wrote the listings.

• Vintage placeholder text, lorem ipsum, two paragraphs, minor Latin, good condition. Five dollars or best offer.
• Orphaned hyperlink, destination unknown, great for conversation. One dollar.
• Meta description, 155 characters, never used, still in original packaging. Eight dollars.
• Hit counter, fourteen visits since 2019, performance anxiety included. Free.
• Broken-image icon, 16x16, beige, collectible. Three dollars.
• Unused favicon, tiny, faint, possibly haunted. Two dollars.

I labeled the whole thing 'porch pickup only,' which is an odd requirement for a hyperlink. But it felt right. A website is a place, sort of, and every place has a porch.

The Messages

At 9:12 p.m., someone asked if the vintage placeholder text was still available. It was. At 9:14, the same person asked for more photos of the Latin. At 9:31, a man named Kent offered three dollars and a bag of limes. At 10:02, someone asked whether the hit counter came with the anxiety or if that was extra. I said the anxiety was included at no additional charge.

At 10:07, someone asked if the meta description was still available. At 10:08, someone asked again. At 2:41 a.m., a person named Brenda asked if the site was 'a real website.' I said yes, in the sense that it is real and also a website. She asked if it came with the domain. I said the domain was not for sale. The domain was the warehouse.

One buyer flagged the listing as 'not a real item.' I appealed to Marketplace. The appeal is pending. The republic of commerce has its own courts, and they are slow.

The Economics of Nothing

Scarcity is a story we tell. I had one orphaned link. Suddenly it was rare. I had no meta description in demand, but I wrote 'only one available,' which is technically true of all things. The American urge to monetize anything with a URL is strong and not easily embarrassed.

I priced the hit counter at free, which made it the most desirable item. Six people asked about the hit counter. No one asked about the meta description. The market had spoken: anxiety is worth more than description. I considered this a finding.

A woman named Brenda said she was 'in the area' and could swing by at seven. She did not. I sat on the porch with a laptop. Dale, my neighbor, asked what I was selling. I said a website's inventory. He said, 'You're not selling anything.' I said, 'That's the point.' He said, 'That's not a point.' Maybe he's right.

Pickup Only

The listing stayed up for two weeks. I got fourteen inquiries about the vintage placeholder text. It is still available. It always will be. That is the nature of lorem ipsum: infinite, unclaimed, slightly dusty. I did not monetize the site, but I did learn that a marketplace is a place where strangers negotiate over the meaning of things, and sometimes over a bag of limes.

The meta description remains in its packaging. I am thinking of raising the price. Supply is limited, after all. There is only one, unless you count every other website, which I do not.