Seattle
Times
SEATTLE -
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul?" - Mark 8:36. And how will it affect your eBay feedback rating? Adam
Burtle of Woodinville, Wash., gained not the world but $400 in an auction on the
Internet site that ended at 4:36 p.m. Thursday.
Bidding for the item, listed
as "20 yr-old Seattle boy's SOUL, hardly used," began at 5 cents Feb. 1. A bidding
war for Burtle's soul broke out in the auction's final hour, shooting its selling
price from $56 up to $400.
"I was happy to be past $7.50," said Burtle,
an atheist, noting that an ex-girlfriend had bid $6.66 - the number of the beast
- for his soul.
But his soul's going, going, gone: eBay officials removed
the listing and suspended Burtle from the site. For eBay, the issue seems not
metaphysical but postal.
"You have to have a piece of merchandise that
a seller can deliver to a buyer," said eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove.
In
the past, the San Jose, Calif.-based company has stopped auctions for human souls
before they ended, but Burtle's slipped through the cracks. Pursglove said the
company can't stop the two parties from carrying on any transaction on their own
at this point.
The buyer is a woman from Des Moines, Iowa. It's unclear
what kind of hands Burtle's soul has fallen into because she has a feedback rating
of 0 - meaning she has no track record of behavior with other eBay users.
"I
don't think she's going to be able to collect on my soul, to be honest," Burtle
said.
Burtle, a University of Washington student and part-time automotive
technician, was pictured in the auction listing wearing an "I'm with stupid" T-shirt.
And while no one may be able to vouch for his soul, his one feedback on eBay is
a glowing one: "Truly a man I would trust my daughter with," said someone who
bought a Bill Hicks comedy CD from him.
In the eBay description for his
soul, Burtle wrote: "Please realize, I make no warranties as to the condition
of the soul. As of now, it is near mint condition, with only minor scratches.
"Due
to difficulties involved with removing my soul, the winning bidder will either
have to settle for a night of yummy Thai food and cool indie flicks, or wait until
my natural death."
In the past, people have tried to sell a liver and a
kidney on eBay, a site with 22 million users and 6 million items up for bid at
any given moment.
"People have tried to auction off, as pranks, their virginity,"
said Laura Fisher Kaiser, co-author of "The Official eBay Guide to Buying, Selling
and Collecting Just About Anything."
The list of prohibited items includes
guns, body parts, drugs and alcohol.
"I think what's funny about it is
the idea that you can sell anything on eBay, and people are constantly trying
to push the limits on that, to see how big a dent they can make in the cultural
consciousness," Kaiser said.
For his part, Burtle was less interested in
the cultural consciousness than placing what he said amounted to a clever personal
ad not to be taken seriously.
"I was just bored, and I'm a geek. So anytime
I'm bored, I go back to my Internet." |
