I messed up the plant swap group, and it’s all because I skipped the fine print
Last month I got a notification that my post was removed from the local plant swap Facebook group I’d joined 20 minutes earlier. I was sitting on my couch after work, still wearing my lanyard with the broken company ID clip, drinking lukewarm cold brew I’d forgotten about in the cupholder of my car that morning. I stared at the notification for a minute, annoyed. I was just trying to give away five extra pothos cuttings I’d rooted in old plastic water bottles in my bathroom. What was the big deal?
I clicked through to the mod’s comment that said “please review the pinned rules before posting” and I rolled my eyes, because who reads the rules when you join a new group? I’ve joined like a dozen hobby groups in the last couple years, never read the rules, never had a problem. Well, except that one time I got banned from a hiking group for posting a photo of my dog off-leash when there was a rule against that, but whatever, that group was full of stick-in-the-muds anyway.
But I was embarrassed, so I clicked the pinned post. First came the rules, 10 short points, nothing crazy. But I’d broken two immediately: first, every post has to have your general neighborhood in the title. Second, max three posts a week per person. I’d broken both. I was gonna argue in my head, like why does it matter if I post five? But then I kept reading, and the rules had little casual explanations from the mods, little notes from when they made the rule. The location thing? Back in 2021, before the rule, someone drove 40 minutes from the north end of the county to pick up a fiddle leaf fig, only to find out the person posting was 40 minutes the other direction, and they didn’t speak much English so they didn’t answer texts. Everyone got mad, so they made the rule. The three post limit? Before that, one person would post 15 cuttings every weekend and push everyone else’s posts off the first page before anyone saw them. Oh. I never thought about that. I just wanted to get rid of my cuttings, I didn’t think about the person who only had one succulent to swap, their post getting buried before anyone even saw it.
Right below the rules in the same pinned post was the weekly community highlight thread, which I would’ve never clicked on if my post hadn’t been taken down. That’s the thing, I never click those, right? I join a group to post my own stuff, not scroll through other people’s hauls. I thought it was just people bragging about the rare $100 plant they got for free. But I clicked, just to kill time while I waited for my pasta to boil.
And it was just… nice. People posted photos of what they’d swapped that week. One teen got a variegated pothos cutting she’d been wanting for over a year, in exchange for a handful of mint cuttings from her backyard. A retired guy shared that he’d given away a whole bag of amaryllis bulbs he’d had sitting in his garage for years, and the person who took them sent him a photo of them blooming on her porch for her elderly mom, who used to grow amaryllis when she was a kid. There was even a photo of the lead mod’s cat Mochi sitting in an empty ceramic pot someone gave her, the caption said “new favorite bed, thanks y’all”. I sat there reading through the whole thread, my pasta got a little overcooked and sticky, I didn’t even care.
I reposted my cuttings the next day, followed all the rules, even double checked the location format. Still messed up a little, put “west side” instead of “Westside Neighborhood” like the rule said, so one girl showed up at the wrong apartment complex 10 minutes away, had to backtrack. I felt so bad I gave her an extra string of pearls cutting I wasn’t even planning to swap, we ended up standing on my porch for 20 minutes complaining about how our landlords won’t let us put holes in the walls for plant hangers. She’s new to the city, didn’t know anyone here, we go on walks with our dogs sometimes now.
I’m not gonna sit here and say “always read the rules it’ll change your life” or whatever. I still skip the rules half the time. Last week I joined a used book swap group, posted my listing before checking, got a gentle reminder to add my zip code, oops. I still think some rules are unnecessarily rigid—this plant group has a rule that no one can sell anything for more than $5, and I saw a guy give away a really healthy rare anthurium a couple weeks ago that would’ve cost him $40 just to get the plant originally, and he wouldn’t let anyone pay him more than $5. That felt silly, to be honest. But then in the next highlight thread, someone pointed out that rule keeps the flippers out, the people who come in, buy up cheap rare plants and resell them on Etsy for $100, which ruins it for everyone who just wants to swap extra stuff. I get it, even if it still feels a little harsh sometimes.
But I’ve started pausing for 10 minutes now, before I post anything new anywhere. Read the rules, scroll through the last couple of highlight posts if the group has them. Rules aren’t just a bunch of stuffy restrictions people made up to annoy you. They’re just all the mistakes the group already made, written down so you don’t have to make them too. And the highlight posts? They’re not just brag posts. They tell you what the group actually cares about. If all the highlights are just people flexing how much their new plant is worth, you know you can dip. If they’re people sharing silly cat photos in plant pots and stories about swapping bulbs to make someone’s mom happy, that’s the good stuff.
I still have three pothos cuttings left, actually. I’ll post them next week, three max, remember to put Westside Neighborhood right in the title. No mistakes this time, probably.
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