Disclaimer: I have studied a bit of psychology in my days, but I do not claim to be an expert of any kind. The analysis I make of the following cases of “Ebay Exhibitionism” are not meant to be diagnoses, they are just my opinions.
A special thanks to: jckseouljah87 (sorry I don’t know your real name — please reveal yourself) to providing me the link to this article from which I will pull my first round of case studies. Also as a note, I am going to use the word exhibitionism several times to classify the motives behind each case so I figured it might serve well to provide a definition: extravagant and conspicuous behavior intended to attract attention to yourself.
Numero Uno: A Role in a Stephen King Novel
- Now I don’t know if Stephen King was the one who came up with this or if it was his publicist/publisher/other managing professional who decided to do this, but overall it lead to a bunch of good press for Mr.King. Not only did the fans love him for giving them the opportunity to become immortalized in one of his novels, but he rasied money for charity. Not to mention the book got huge media attention before it was even finished being written. I’m going to go ahead and classify this as mildly exhibitionist, since I think it certainly had some legit merit to it, but I still think King mainly participated to get some buzz for his new book.
Number Two: Nicholas the Unwanted Brussel Sprout
- I’m gonna start off just by saying — this is plain dumb. Clearly Leigh Knight (who decided to sell this one lonely brussel sprout after he decided he detested the green guys during Christmas dinner) was wasted on egg nog during Christmas, regressed to the age of 4 and started naming his unwanted vegetables, and then somehow came up with the bright idea to sell a rotting legume online to make some extra cash. And that he did — the guy made 1,200 pounds the bastard! Exhibitionist – absolutely – someone wanted some attencion.
Nummer 3: New Zealand
- There is most certainly a rivalry between Australia and New Zealand but one Australian decided to take it to a new level when he tried to auction off New Zealand and befitted it with a lovely description for sale. I’d say this is highly exhibitionist considering this guy was obviously never going to get away with selling a country he has no control over, and the most he could stand to profit from this joke was a bunch of attention from friends and the media. I think he’s bordering on the narcissistic edge of exhibitionist.
So far from the three cases above ( and there’s more wacky-ness to come ) it sure seems that when people take to the online auction sites to bizarre things, they are driven by more than just monetary compensation. I believe that the ease of access that the Internet provides allows for actions, which had they taken place in a fixed geographic location would have created only a minor ripple of reaction, to take off and garner huge amounts of media attention. All one has to do to get their name and story posted on a few blogs, papers, and maybe even on TV is find something preposterous to sell and put it on eBay. Maybe we should all bring in some weird shit to the next class and put it up for sale and see who gets the most traffic?
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- Playing with Value (2) | amandicle
- Ladies — Do You Wished You Saved the Big V for eBay? (8) | amandicle
- About Ebay. (3) | Patricia
One Comment
I think exhibitionism is clearly a part of it, but probably not the only part of it. I think these cases show different uses of eBay as a platform for selling (more than products) ideas. These ideas challenge the communication form and cultural exchange of commerce: if it’s a role in a book, a Brussels Sprout or an island (we meet every Tuesday on an island that was sold for less than the Brussels Sprout was). I don’t think these experiments are challenging capitalism or anything like that but they do play with our ideas of “value” and use eBay’s system as a platform for this discussion.