“eBay developers create test listings to debug features and settings, or for Power Users to preview and QA their regular listings. These auction listings have esoteric acronyms and abbreviations for titles, and images that range from stock to baffling to perfect. And they are full of warnings like TEST ITEM DO NOT BUY OR BID, and NO ITEM EXISTS NO FEEDBACK GIVEN. Artist Greg Allen appropriated the titles, texts, prices, shipping conditions, and images of test listings created by the eBay developers, and sold them as actual prints. The project was repeatedly complicated by eBay’s TOS restrictions on the use of certain text (e.g., DO NOT BID OR BUY, which has a contentious history of use as a protest tool by disgruntled eBay sellers) and certain categories (i.e., completing actual sales for test listings), which felt useful for examining the assumptions built into all our platforms for art, whether online or IRL.” (From the artist website)