The saga of a soul:Why I sold my immortal soul on eBaY.com |
I've heard about ebay.com from friends on IRC who decided to purchase or sell goods- from CD's, to cars, to bizarre items like marijuana and pressed flowers. While they would chat about the obvious versitility of this popular website, I pondered about what items can legally be sold. Do these acceptable items include intangible items? Companies and ideas are bought and sold daily. In the interest of this question, and within my continuing interests in the realm of fictional sociology, I decided to put the ultimate intangible item up on the auctioning block. Late at night last night, March 1, 2000, I decided to sell my immortal soul on www.ebay.com. Shortly thereafter I told some channels on IRC about the auction, and soon bids went from the initial price of $1.00 USD to $1,000 USD. Within an hour, my soul was worth $10 MILLION USD, the maximum bid amount that eBaY could allow within their limits. I went to bed that night, flattered by the results, but as I lie awake looking at the cieling, I worried about the evolution of this experiment. Although I had intentionally done this to provoke a philosophical response, it seemed the experiment has taken a questionable sexual turn. (It is my belief that this may have been the reason why eBaY decided to pull the auction later in the day on March 1st.) I came online later and found that eBaY had taken the soul off the auctioning block. I discussed it with those I had been talking to the night before. Those who had bid on my soul got an email notifying them that they were under no legal binds to pay the actual bid, since the site was pulled from their directory. They were concerned about what information they might have notified me with in regards to the site. Sure enough, when I checked my email, I found a letter from Andy Manning at eBaY, which stated the following: eBay appreciates the fact that you chose to list your auction:273257199 Immortal Soul For Sale!!with us. However, we have determined that your item is inappropriate for listingon eBay. Therefore, we have ended this auction and all fees have been creditedto your account. In addition, I received MANY emails from those who had different concerns/comments. Here's a list of some of the questions I was asked. Also below are one of five emails I received by members of the media who were interested in the project: How are you going to ship this??? What is a soul to you???? Where will your soul live???? soul is a spirit...nothing else???? How are you going to Honor this??? Subject: Your Advertisement on EBAY Hello, Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Chris and i am an assignment editor at a television station in Columbia, South Carolina. I recieved a hyper-link to your auction concerning "Soul for sale". I had a few questions for you if you will indulge me for a moment. First of all is the soul yours? Is the picture on the auction yours? How do you plan to transfer the soul, or do you plan to be someone's slave? Is this really a personal ad for a date? How did you decide the value of your soul? How old are you? What would someone do with more than one soul? Would that make them schizophrenic? Please take the time to reply to this e-mail. I would really appreciate it. Chris LeClere Assignment EditorWLTX-TV
I also received email that would correlate the sexual connotations I feared would be generated from looking at the actual auction. I do admit that certain wordings implied that this auction could easily have been a guise for a personal ad, I feel at the same time that this was obviously an action of a SOUL. To me a soul, if in fact one does exist (the term has been debated among different religious groups for ages, and therefore is a contested term), is an extension of the physical self, so the idea that someone who read the auction and assumed that this was a personal ad is ridiculous to me, for a personal ad would imply that one would be receiving a physical product. This is clearly not the case. So to all you romeos that emailed me, that thought you could buy some tits and ass to clean and cook for you, sorry, but this college kid is not for sale. I was never FOR sale in the first place.
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