| AUCTION STAND FOR PERSONAL HATE. |
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Eryk Salvaggio.
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| On May 28th, 2001, I [Eryk Salvaggio] arranged to sell my personal hate through online auctioneer, ebay. What follows is the original message [There is an exact replica of the ebay page located here] followed by the emails, and answers, that took place as a result before the auction was terminated by ebay.com for violation of its elusive "policies."
ITEM #1434614536. Highest Bidder recieves the utmost of contempt from the seller. From the date of its reception, I will require your name and address. From the time I recieve this information, I will consider you with disgust, hate, and malice. I will not assist you in any way, shape, or form. I will consider you with bitterness and resentment. When I am faced with the acceptance of any failure in my life- be it in my career or my personal life, I will consider you to blame. It will be a safe, comfortable hatred from a distance, the kind of hatred that has no physical manifestation. From this, you may live in safety without fear of danger coming to you through this purchase. My hatred will not be the result of religion, color, race, or gender, nor will it stem from disabilities. It will grow out of the essence of your being. It will rise from the day you were born. [Include your birthday and I will place a black box over the date when it appears in calendars.] It will be aimed at your core, at the essence of who you are as a person. You will exist solely as a name on which I may transfer my own inability to accept failure and disappointment. You will become a myth, a legend, a kind of devil on which I may blame all that is wrong with the world. In a sense, you may consider this purchase the purchase of blame for my fate and therefore you become fate itself for just one human being, which one does not very often get to do these days. There will not be any flaming excrement on your door, or death threats, or scary emails or late night phone calls. Instead, you will recieve my hatred in the form of forced apathy. I will deliberately assail the thought of your existence in my mind as if it is a lie, but I will know it is true. Shipping charges negligible. Zeppelins are a dirigible. QUESTION FOR SELLER. Question from: ___________ I am interested in what you are offering, there is not enough well directed hatred in my life, I feel this will fill a void that has been there for years. I do have some questions... What is the term of the offer, is this offer good for the life of the buyer or seller? Can it be sold or transferred? Because of the nature of the product offered how can the buyer confirm delivery? Further, to comply with all state laws, as this is more of a service contract then a sale of goods, and the contract could last for the life of either the seller of buyer, a formal writing must be completed for the successful buyer to obtain a valid, enforceable service contract, pursuant to the statute of frauds. Can you fully detail the involved hatred services you will provide? Seller Responds: The offer is good for the life of the buyer or seller, whichever ends first. You may return my hatred if you don't want it, but no refund can be applied. If you wish to sell it to another person, it would require my notification of the new buyer, but the terms will not change. The same applies to transfer- it must be transferred willingly on behalf of whom it is being transferred to. Should you win, you will receive a symbolic representation of my hate. It will only be a representation and not the product itself- so, if you give the representation away, you will still receive my hate, but without the benefit of drama. I believe this sale serves as the delivery of an object, not a service, and this object will be based entirely on a foundation of trust, which will be set up between you and I, should you score the highest bid. Hate, I am sure you know, is a form of co-dependency and mutual emotional regard. As with any kind of hate, you will simply have to have faith in me to continue carrying it for you. Consider, if you will, that hate is a wild animal. With this purchase, you render it domesticated. If the animal ruins your furniture, bites, etc, you tolerate it out of a sense of obligation and loyalty to the animal. You may consider the purchase of my hatred as the purchase of such an animal. Alternatively, you may have it destroyed at a loss. Cheers! Question from: ____________ Can you send me a picture of how angry you will be? If you please, a picture of your hatred? I want to be sure you will give me quality. Seller Responds: Hello, I just wanted to say that the brand of hatred you are buying is a passive aggressive model- so my face would appear, if you were to ever see it, as my face always appears. Probably I would make my mouth smaller in an evolutionary left-over stemming from my disgust, to ensure that the swarming flies or rats would not enter my body. My eyes would probably be stuck mid roll on account of my perpetual state of annoyance at your existence. I do have a fair representation of what the hate looks like, though. I've included it with an attachment. It's at roughly 1/300th size. Hope it gives it makes for an adequate example.
Question from: ___________ Can I bid for this item as a gift for a friend? Is it transferable? If I got bored of it would I be able to sell it on? What kind of feedback would you post after the trade? Seller Responds: Hi John, As far as transferable, I am not sure. Once my hate is out there I think it will stay with one person. If you really want to share the hate, you could probably give someone else yours and use mine as your own. Just a thought. What you do with my hate after you get it is your own business. If you get bored of it, unfortunately, you are stuck with it. If you win, I could not be cordial and assist you any further in making your life less boring. Odds are, I would just end up being really satisfied that you were bored, because I would not have brought any more joy into your life. If you don't get bored, I will resent you and your pompous attitude that simply treats my emotions as if they were a toy. I hope this is to your liking? Question from: ____________ i gotta ask... what prompted you to sell your personal hatred? What's it actually worth and what kind of condition is it in? Seller Responds: Well I sold my hatred for the reasons that anyone sells any sort of object on ebay. It was kind of getting out of style, and I figured someone else might want it. I am planning on using the money to invest in Mirth. That's what the kids are into now. It is intact, though a bit battered and tends to get weaker as I get older. But it works well and should bring you years of use. $50,300 It was at this point that I noticed the price had risen from $0.25 to $26.00 to $51.00 and then, coming back from a long day at work, discovering a $50,100 bid. Which created several problems. One: The bidder had no intention of purchasing the item. Two: Ebay charges a commission fee for any items sold. This left us in the hole for an estimate $687.00. Contact with the offending bidder, a cell biology junior at UC Davis, revealed that he intended to pay, provided I could offer proof of delivery. Which, of course, we could not offer. Ironically, he was recieving my hatred for free. At this stage, we were forced to cancel the bids, integrity of the "artwork" be damned. Unfortunately, he had started a pattern of ridiculously high bids. While all of these bids were technically "legally binding contracts" [ebay's words] they would have to pay only if I could deliver the object. There was also no manner in which I could legally prove delivery. So, a modification was made to the original art work, changing it to a sale of hatred with a piece of paper [a drawing of my hate] as a representation of the emotional state. In a very bizarre twist, it was only at this point that ebay contacted me concerning the bizarre nature of this item. eBay appreciates the fact that you chose to list your auction: It seems that now, with the addition of a physical, saleable item, it had just become too much for ebay to handle. Thier professional integrity at risk, they cancelled the auction, erased all record of its occurance [which I had archived 6 hours beforehand] and sent messages [starting not with "hello," it appears, but with "warning"] to all the bidders on the item. Usually, ebay cancels auctions for one of three reasons: It violates copyright law, the item is illegal, or it violates ebay's terms and conditions. I couldn't find any evidence that I had violated a single rule. Hi there. It was listed under the category of "Art" and was, as promised, an art-related item, a drawing. I would hate to think that ebay is in a position to regulate what it considers appropriate as art and what is not. Could I sell drawings of stick figures if I wanted? What about paintings of them? Would it help if I got a panel of art world professionals to verify for you that this auction consisted of the legitimate sale of an art work? I don't mean any offense, but I would like a clarification, for the record, of the basis behind the decision to terminate bidding on my item. So far, all responses to my inquiry have been met by computers, coldly sending out useless replies and accumulating piles of email to be deleted on a weekly basis. |
