Selling Your Soul: Bizarre Fun With Ebay
Written: Dec 10 '00
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Selling Your Soul: Bizarre Fun With Ebay
Ebay is the greatest auction site on the internet, because it's the most notorious. Word of mouth about Ebay spread quickly after the site was launched, and soon everyone and their dog started digging in their closets and attics for any bone to sell online. While some folks seized the site as a playground for traditional auctioneering -- selling such wonders as Victorian China Tea Cups (actually sipped by the queen's very lips!) and Sex Pistols Paraphernalia (ibid!), Ebay effectively turned the internet into the Salvation Army of the masses, magically transforming what might otherwise be charitable donations to Goodwill into cold hard cash. Soon new home businesses burgeoned, when some enterprising auctioneers began to realize they were making more money trading (and not just yard-sale-ing) on Ebay than they were generating in their day job. And consumers began to realize that if they could buy used for 1/3 of the new price, then why leave home to go blow money at the mall? The auction site quickly became the trading ground of the people. Ebay went public on the stock market, made commercials, and secured their place in Internet history as the auction place to be.
Ebay is IgPay AtinLay for "be," isn't it?
Faint of heart read no further. For the rest of this review, we're headed into the dark side of the web...
Soul Brokers
Epinionators galore have written in support of Ebay and I concur whole-heartedly that it is the best auction site on the internet, bar none. Chances are very good that you'll find just about anything you like on Ebay. Because all sorts of people -- from the holy to the strange -- are selling all sorts of odd quirky things. Indeed, some people are literally selling their soul to the highest bidder.
Before I even knew what Ebay was, I'd seen the joke: I have one of those friends who e-mails me silly Internet humor links and about four years ago he sent me an e-mail message with an URL attached that read "Soul For Sale." I clicked on it, and found myself at Ebay, where some joker had posted a gag item up for bid: "One Human Soul." Not knowing what Ebay was about, I didn't think it was funny...just strange. So I started clicking around and soon discovered the wonders of online auctioning. By the time I was addicted to trading online, I went back to that page, but the Human Soul had been sold. (No big deal, I bought a well-thumbed HP Lovecraft novel and extra memory for my graphics card for cheap instead!)
Reincarnation!
I was searching Ebay the other night and typed "Human Soul" in the search box, just to see what would turn up. I was in luck: I found an Ebay item listed whose title read "Human Soul -- Not a Joke -- Actual Soul for Sale!" I clicked on the page and there it was, complete with a digital photograph and mock catalog listing that had the word "God" typed in under "Manufacturer". The seller claimed to be a soul broker, who wasn't selling his own soul, but someone else's (apparently, he had bought a signed contract from someone on Ebay and now wanted to trade it on Ebay). The sales pitch read, "Want to make a deal with the devil? Why use your own soul?" There was even a link to a photo of the contract, with signature lines marked over ("Names will be released to the highest bidder" the sales pitch authoritatively promised).
The opening bid was $20 -- about the price of a carton of cigarettes. When I first saw it I laughed, but then I realized just how sad it really was. I spent a few moments wondering how sick you'd have to be to sell your soul...or how desperate you'd have to be to buy someone else's. The very idea gives Pay Pal a whole new meaning.
Needless to say, by the time I finished contemplating the strangeness that is the Millennium, the powers that Bebay at Ebay deleted the page and it is no longer available. Ebay's police force is very good at censoring these things -- I'm impressed! But of course, this time I had had the foresight to take a screen capture of the "Soul" page (see for yourself on my home page, listed in my member profile).
Really, Really, Really Weird Stuff!
Ebay is chock full of oddities like soul brokers. You've probably heard the urban legends about people selling stolen organs and dates with models to the highest bidder. Ever since I first was exposed to the "soul for sale" joke, I've enjoyed searching for wild and crazy items, just in the hopes of catching them before the Ebay police close down the auction. Eventually, however, I discovered that Ebay does the work for you, by having an item category exclusively dedicated to weirdness: "Weird Stuff." (You'll find "Weird Stuff" hierarchically placed under the "Collectibles" category, naturally). Weird Stuff has three crazy subcategories, too: Slightly Unusual, Really Weird, and Totally Bizarre. What distinguishes "Unusual" from "Bizarre"? I have no idea. But I do know that there must be an awful lot of strange items up for sale on Ebay if they need three categories to contain it all!
Naturally, I surf these oddball categories fairly regularly, hoping to find something, well, really, really weird. I notice a lot of repetition: the "banned" butterfly tattooed Barbie doll is an ever-popular favorite, as are dragon statues and arcane daggers, and all sorts of things you'd only find in a head shop, like ashtrays purporting to be made of human skull and barbecue aprons emblazoned with photographs of famous cannibals like Jeffery Dahmer. (Really, really, really weird...one step too weird even for me!) Or you can choose Ebay's "related topics" which are always listed at the top of the listing, where you'll find a link to a list of "risque novelties" that probably ought to be hidden behind a curtain somewhere on Ebay's site.
I'm always surprised at what I find on Ebay, whether I'm purposely hunting the wacky or not. I'm even more amazed that someone is paid to sort through it all and censor out the worst of the bunch.
I wonder if they're hiring.
No, what I'm truly wondering is who really canceled the bidding on that poor human's soul.
-- unheimlich, 12/00
Recommended:
Yes
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unheimlich
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Location: USA
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Tattooed Everything.
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