Would You Sell Your Soul on Ebay?
By Jessica Cook and Carley Hollis
Monday 28th September 2009
Monday 28th September 2009
“Ebay Logo”, Ebay, 03.09.09, www.ebay.co.uk
WOULD YOU SELL your soul for less than £12?
Gareth Malham, 26 year old photography graduate from Newcastle, sold his soul for £11.61 on eBay with free postage and packaging in 2002. The buyer, a resident of Oklamoma allegedly wanted the soul because he has gambled his own in a game of air hockey. The legal contract for the soul was supposedly written in Malhams blood. In the last seven years, more and more obscure items have been listed on ebay – some have sold for thousands of pounds and been made famous by the world press, while others have been removed due to legal issues, ebay’s own rules on saleable items or the sheer unlikelihood of anyone actually paying £20,000 for a piece of gum once chewed by Britney Spears. (The actual top price for a piece of Britney’s gum was $14,000, in case you were wondering.) Ebay will no longer allow souls to be listed upon its website; but that’s not to say that it isn’t possible to sell ones soul. While Bart Simpson sold his soul for a mere $5 in that infamous The Simpsons episode, the website wewantyoursouls.com set up a lucrative business in pricing people’s souls, according to their actions and lifestyles. The website would also tell you how the pureness of your soul rated with that of others, allowing each individual to establish how popular their soul would be if they did decide to see it. Despite the fact that the website has now been removed from the internet, simply googling ‘sell my soul’ will present you with some 50,500,000 results, ranging from song lyrics to forms which formally record the removal of your soul. Souls are not the only unusual items to be listed on the internet for sale. Rosie Reid, an 18 year old student who wished to escape graduate debt sold her virginity for £8,400 on the internet, but was then investigated by the police for soliciting sex. An Australian man who sold his whole life, including his house, car, motorbike and introductions to his friends after a painful marriage breakdown made 384,000 Australian dollars but said he was unhappy with the final price he received. It seems that the get-rich-quick solutions offered by selling usual items online often have disastrous consequences. In contrast, genuinely unique money making ideas online gain both fame and success. The Red Paperclip Project was a hugely successful American internet phenomenon which saw a single individual swap a red paper clip for a house in 14 trades and one year exactly. Similarly, British student Alex Tew made a million US Dollars by selling a million pixels on his homepage themilliondollarhomepage.com to any individual, group or company who wanted to buy the pixels for advertising space. Tew was also looking to find a way to escape student debt, but where Reid’s antics left her feeling distressed, Tew’s project gained was an ingenious way of making money which is why it was so successful. The moral of the story here seems to be that if you wish to make money from the internet, the best way of doing so is to have a genuine and unique idea which the world (and the press!) can take into their hearts.
Gareth Malham, 26 year old photography graduate from Newcastle, sold his soul for £11.61 on eBay with free postage and packaging in 2002. The buyer, a resident of Oklamoma allegedly wanted the soul because he has gambled his own in a game of air hockey. The legal contract for the soul was supposedly written in Malhams blood. In the last seven years, more and more obscure items have been listed on ebay – some have sold for thousands of pounds and been made famous by the world press, while others have been removed due to legal issues, ebay’s own rules on saleable items or the sheer unlikelihood of anyone actually paying £20,000 for a piece of gum once chewed by Britney Spears. (The actual top price for a piece of Britney’s gum was $14,000, in case you were wondering.) Ebay will no longer allow souls to be listed upon its website; but that’s not to say that it isn’t possible to sell ones soul. While Bart Simpson sold his soul for a mere $5 in that infamous The Simpsons episode, the website wewantyoursouls.com set up a lucrative business in pricing people’s souls, according to their actions and lifestyles. The website would also tell you how the pureness of your soul rated with that of others, allowing each individual to establish how popular their soul would be if they did decide to see it. Despite the fact that the website has now been removed from the internet, simply googling ‘sell my soul’ will present you with some 50,500,000 results, ranging from song lyrics to forms which formally record the removal of your soul. Souls are not the only unusual items to be listed on the internet for sale. Rosie Reid, an 18 year old student who wished to escape graduate debt sold her virginity for £8,400 on the internet, but was then investigated by the police for soliciting sex. An Australian man who sold his whole life, including his house, car, motorbike and introductions to his friends after a painful marriage breakdown made 384,000 Australian dollars but said he was unhappy with the final price he received. It seems that the get-rich-quick solutions offered by selling usual items online often have disastrous consequences. In contrast, genuinely unique money making ideas online gain both fame and success. The Red Paperclip Project was a hugely successful American internet phenomenon which saw a single individual swap a red paper clip for a house in 14 trades and one year exactly. Similarly, British student Alex Tew made a million US Dollars by selling a million pixels on his homepage themilliondollarhomepage.com to any individual, group or company who wanted to buy the pixels for advertising space. Tew was also looking to find a way to escape student debt, but where Reid’s antics left her feeling distressed, Tew’s project gained was an ingenious way of making money which is why it was so successful. The moral of the story here seems to be that if you wish to make money from the internet, the best way of doing so is to have a genuine and unique idea which the world (and the press!) can take into their hearts.