Life For Sale On eBay Posts New Sequel: Do We Care?

The eBay auction for Ian Usher’s entire life is officially over. The winning bid: AU$399,300 (US$380,286). Unfortunately for Usher, it’s about $100,000 less than what he’d expected. (I suppose everyone’s got recession worries.)

The question is, What’s Next? For starters: a sequel-website. Usher’s original website, http://www.alife4sale.com, now has a link to Part 2: http://www.100goals100weeks.com.

AAARRRGGGGHuhhh.

This move, of course, is part of a not-so-new trend of living one’s life in a collective time and space. We’re way beyond tv culture, and now wading deep into YouTube waters. Life no longer mimics tv content. It IS content — and it’s being documented and broadcasted (or slivercasted) in realtime.

I can’t help thinking about Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show“, a movie released in 1999. From the moment of birth, Truman Burbank’s life is broadcast 24/7 on live tv — without his knowledge or consent. Less than a decade later, we hear of thousands willingly auditioning for the chance to get on reality tv. A chance to live and tell all in public.

As technology allows us to record and archive ever-increasing hordes of data with minimal material costs, we’re seeing more and more of these representations. The itch to document one’s self, one’s loves, one’s property — every moment from every angle — is now getting scratched all the time.

The question becomes: what’s the point of so much information? Really, who cares?

There’s a difference between a photograph, a film, and a video. A photo captures a single frame. Film captures 24 frames per second. HD is at 60 frames per second. Not everything has to be recorded on HD! My point on this tangent being: Edit! Much ado about nothing is, well, boring.

Move on, Usher. Move on.

Usher: Life for Sale on eBay Not Worth $2 Million

This past Sunday, heartbroken Ian Usher opened up an eBay auction for bids on his entire life’s property in Perth. In less than 24 hours, the bidding frenzy had raised the top price to over $2 Million (AU$1 = US$0.96). Interestingly, the next day, Usher decided to let common sense — not greed — rule. His property, it seems, isn’t worth THAT much. Good for him.

Realizing the eBay system was allowing non-registered bidders to place potentially fake bids, Usher issued a statement yesterday:

Apologies to all, but I guess there are a lot of bored idiots out there…

…after a long day on the computer, I have decided to pull all bids back as far as the first registered bidder, and the price is back to A$155,000 as I write this … we are back in the land of common sense and reality, so it’s over to you.

We’re happy to report that as of this posting, he now has 58 solid bids, with a top bid of over AU$383,000. We’re definitely rooting for Usher.

Which leads us to a thought-provoking NYT Op-Ed piece by Paul Krugman, posted coincidentally on the same day Usher put his home, his property all on eBay. Going against the grain, Krugman asks: Why is owning a home so integral to living the American Dream? Why is homeownership equated with having a “vital stake in the future of our country” (as the Bushites are pushing us to believe)?

Krugman writes about U.S. policies that historically favor homeowners. Non-homeowners are pretty much second-class citizens. But, he argues that we should recognize that homeownership has major risks. One of them being: Homeowners are rendered immobile by their homes. They can’t move around as much or as fast.

Which brings us back to Ian Usher. By the end of the auction, he will no longer be a homeowner. And he will have sold everything he owns. But he will have gained a fresh start. This is the future: letting go, feeling free.

Some might call it the audacity of hope. Go, Usher!

Person Paul Krugman

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A Life for Sale on eBay

Does everything have a price? Apparently so. Ian Usher, a 44-year-old Englishman living in Perth, Australia, has had enough of his life. So he’s selling what he feels has defined his life up to this point: 3-bedroom home (valued at AU$400-420,000) and all its contents in Perth, car, motorbike, jetski, kitesurfing gear. Introductions to his friends. His lifestyle. Even a trial stint at his job at a carpet store.

Usher has published the details on http://www.alifeforsale.com and is holding an eBay auction that ends this Sunday, June 29th. As of this posting, his eBay listing (which opened Sunday) already has 115 bids. The current bid is at AU$2.2 million (approximately US$2.1 million).

Why? Apparently, a broken heart. Usher says he married “the best girl in the world”, but was “blindsided…by a shocking and awful discovery.” He doesn’t specify. He does say this though:

I now live alone in a house that was being built for us to live in together…I am still surrounded by all the memorabilia of our years together… Everything in my home is a reminder of the wonderful past we shared.

So, after a year in this house I decided that it is time to sell it and move on.

What next?

Upon completion and settlement I will walk out of my home for the last time in just the clothes I am wearing, and carrying only my wallet and passport.

My current thoughts are to then head to the airport, and ask at the flight desk where the next flight with an available seat goes to, and to get on that and see where life takes me from there!

Considering that Usher expected to get just £185,000 (US$365,000) according to BBC, he’s not doing badly. Perhaps people facing foreclosure might adapt his strategy. Why just sell the house? Hey, throw in the whole deal. And the personal narrative too.