Marcel Winatschek

Five Hundred and Fifty Euros, One Color Print

Peter Clatworthy of Nottingham bought an Xbox One on eBay for around £450—plus postage—as a Christmas surprise for his four-year-old son. What arrived was a color photocopy of the console. The listing had described it, in plain text, as a photograph of an Xbox One. He bought it anyway.

He told the Nottingham Post he hadn’t noticed that detail. The listing appeared in the correct Games category, which he apparently took as sufficient evidence that a physical console was what he’d be receiving.

This raises three questions. First: what is a four-year-old doing with an Xbox One? Second: if the listing says explicitly that you are purchasing a photograph, why would you expect a console? And third: is something genuinely happening to human cognition in aggregate, or is Peter Clatworthy simply a singular talent? I can answer at least one of those with some confidence.