Inside Vinted's Wild West: Why the 70M-User Marketplace Is a Hotbed of Chaos

With an impressive user base of over 70 million people globally, the online marketplace Vinted has become a go-to for second-hand bargains. But beneath the surface of bargain deals lies a parallel universe of chaos, where logic is optional and unhinged behavior is the norm. The phenomenon has even spawned a thriving Facebook community, 'Idiots of Vinted Official', where more than 173,000 members share and laugh at the platform's daily absurdities.

Ironically, this unsupervised chaos seems to be part of the platform's addictive appeal. Users describe it as the "Wild West of the Internet," where people argue over a $10 pair of cowboy boots as if their lives depended on it. Documented incidents range from the bizarre—like a T-shirt arriving wrapped in a Pampers diaper—to the outright hostile. One user, Rhiannon Picton-James, reported receiving a broken Gucci watch instead of a cardholder, after which the seller allegedly sent a "barrage of messages" threatening to report her to the police for theft.

"Surprisingly, people are more emotional on the internet, not less," says Dr. Bernie Hogan, a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. "You can more easily get emotionally dysregulated online because there are fewer moderating features helping you assess how to react... it's just harder to think of other people as people. There’s no disincentive to not behave poorly.”

Journalist Ellie Muir, who has made over $1,300 on Vinted since 2022, noted a significant shift for the worse. "I’ve noticed that Vinted users have developed a slight decorum problem – social boundaries and common decency have been thrown out of the window entirely," Muir wrote. This is echoed in common complaints, such as sellers canceling a completed sale for £2.50 only to immediately re-list the item for £5, or buyers receiving items listed as "very good condition" covered in nail polish and with ripped seams.

PRISM Insight: The Vinted phenomenon is a microcosm of a broader trend in the platformization of everything. As peer-to-peer (P2P) commerce explodes, it bypasses traditional customer service and dispute resolution structures, exposing the raw, unfiltered, and often irrational nature of human interaction when social friction and accountability are removed. This points to a growing 'decorum deficit' in digital-first economies, a social challenge that will define the next wave of P2P platforms.