Today Depop has more than 21 million users worldwide and since its creation in 2011, it has become a prominent peer-to-peer marketplace. A recent survey of 2,167 Depop users, all aged 24 or under, explained why Gen Z is so interested in shopping secondhand. 75 percent answered that they want to reduce consumption and become conscious consumers. Besides environmental awareness, more than half also utilize the platform to find one-of-a-kind pieces or hope to find apparel with generally lower prices.
Respondents also tend to be more authentic and spontaneous on social platforms than millennials. Gen Z “embraces a nuanced relationship with social media that acknowledges the positives and the negatives of platforms.” And Depop Drama has created a place to share such feelings.
The Instagram account with more than 600K followers is run by an anonymous London creative. Receiving several hundred submissions a week, the founder unveils a whole new level of bizarre behavior on the app. For some reason, when people try buying, selling or trading their stuff online, logical thinking and social decency often disappear. Blaming huge lizards in the post office for the late delivery or saying that the postman dropped the package through the window directly into the toilet, you name it. Choosing posts from funny to wicked and adding a snappy caption, the curator of the account makes it extremely entertaining.
The mysterious creator told Miss Vogue that Depop Drama grew organically: “I had loads of these random screenshots on my phone with nowhere to put them. I decided to start uploading them to Instagram, and before I knew it people started tagging their friends. It then started to become bigger, with people submitting their own stories.”
Since the vendor and customer chat directly without much interference from the platform, things sometimes get a bit... off. Dubious consumer ethics and overly strange interactions lead to funny situations: “People connect with @DepopDrama as it’s relatable, they go to the page for the light-heartedness and to just have a bit of a laugh.”
Getting 300 to 500 submissions a week, it's important to choose which posts the followers will enjoy most. “I always ask myself one question before posting: Do I find it funny myself? I seem to have a similar sense of humor as my followers, so I’ll only ever post ones that make me laugh,” the creative explained.
“My favorite ones are always the weirdest ones or the ones where they’re super short and simple, like one where someone asked to see a photo of a jacket, and the seller took a photo of their dog wearing it,“ the Depop Drama curator continued. It appears that there are literally no boundaries on this fashion retail platform. Some people there are generous and hilarious, while others can be ruthless.
“I think there’s a few reasons why people make these hilarious excuses; people are tied to their personal items so much that they don’t want to let them go for cheap, and get annoyed when people try to haggle. People tend to be quite unreasonable when it comes to asking for a cheap price, and the buyer gets offended,” the creator said.
