Slashdot Mirror
On eBay Addiction
El Volio writes "Believe it or not, Worth magazine has a very funny, subtly insightful article on the phenomenon of eBay addiction... " I've witnessed said addiction in people. Its more than just a little disturbing. Its fairly similiar to the Day Trading addiction I've witnessed in roommates too (the worst part is they don't trade, they just reload all day long).
What makes someone addicted?
Well, let's look at why we become addicted; I feel it's becouse our minds, needing focus, find the easiest place to put it. Other examples are TV, alcohol, etc.
It's not easy to focus on kids, other people (unless it's sappy social trivialities), or (god forbid!) using a computer for productive behaviour. We all know the experience of sitting down at the PC intending to make that cool new driver and ending up spending hours surfing. I've considered deleting my web browser.
So how do you break this habit? It's an issue of empowerment. When you whittle away your time, you feel controlled by your habit, disempowered. To break the habit you need to adress your personal needs; you need to concentrate on what empowers you and do it. If you feel yourself being distracted the resolution is simple: ask yourself if this distraction is empowering or not and make the right decision.
-ted
Believe it or not, there are people selling their ICQ UIN#/pw on eBay, starting at $50 for numbers in the 1million range. I talked to one of them, who styles himself as a broker of numbers, asking him what my # (103792) would be worth, he said he'd pay me $450 for it, and could probably auction it for $750. The things people would bid on...
Last time Rob posted stats, Slashdot was getting 1 million hits a month. eBay gets 1 million hits an HOUR. There is no "Slashdot Effect" in the world of eBay. I'm sure any eBay sys-admins reading your post are chuckling quietly to themselves.
Actually, he mentions his id several times in the article: fish8.
Numerous buyer feedbacks mentioning the article... and the Madonna and baby are real, and listed for sale here.
The scary thing is, someone actually bid on it. Probably in response to the article, but still...
-LjM
I think that eBay is a terrible place to buy anything that you can buy elsewhere. Like that digital camera. I guess there's a few reasons for this.
As someone else said, people will bid stupidly just because they don't want to lose. So you bid $50 for something that costs $100 in the shops, and you feel pretty good. Then someone outbids you. You get into a bidding war. Even when it goes over $100, it seems worth paying "that little bit extra" not to LOSE. Not me, of course, but I'm sure some people feel this way. :-)
Then there's flat-out ignorant buyers. Don't know what somethings costs in the shops, can't be bothered to comparison shop, it's easier just to bid some bucks on eBay.
Then there was the interesting comment someone made about high-priced localities. I bought a Diamond Viper 770 TNT2 card on eBay for more than what it costs in the shops. The American shops, that is. But all the places I found that had lower prices wouldn't ship internationally (I live in Australia). The eBay seller was happy to. I paid twenty bucks less than any price I could find here in Sydney. Maybe similar things were going on with those digital cameras?
But for old stuff, weird stuff, I love eBay. I'm mostly interested in music (that TNT2 card was the only computer related thing I ever bought there). I can find so many old singles, bootlegs, LPs, stuff that simply is not to be found in record shops. Unfortunately there's a lot of stupid bidding goes on. A lot of the time I get outbid so fiercely I just have to think "what is wrong with this idiot, that they would pay so much?!". But maybe it's the last item they need to finish collecting someone's entire discography? All you can do is shrug and assume that sometime someone else will be auctioning the same thing some time soon..
I've only ever sold a few things there.. records that while not bona-fide "rarities" or "collectibles", aren't things you can just go out and shop for. I've gotten good prices.. in the vicinity of $US20 for CDs. If I took these to a second-hand record shop, they'd give me $5 or $10 for them, and that's Australian dollars. So I'm happy.. the buyer is presumably happy.. and eBay are certainly happy.
Og the Cave Man probably collected interesting rocks he found sitting outside the opening to his cave
Just visualizing that image is quite amusing.
Here's a story of something I sold on eBay.
:-(
The very morning of the day my wife's Powerbook 1400 broke, we talked of selling it to fund a new computer purchase. As Murphey's Law would have it, that day I managed to crack the screen-- leaving about 85% of the screen unviewable.
What did I do? Put it up on eBay anyway!
[Up for bid, one Powerbook 1400/117 48M Ram, 750M HD. Everything works except screen and ethernet card.]
Included a description of the screen and picture. I also noted that I had a practically new 3 gig 2 1/2inch drive I could throw in for an extra $150.
The result? Final bid over $400. Buyer opted to buy the HD. In the end, we got over $650 for a BROKEN Powerbook! I love eBay! That was close to what we wanted to get if it was working!
The only reason we put it up is that I noted that someone had sold a near identical model, with a borken screen. However, he had only gotten $150 for it. Personally, I would have been glad to have gotten that.
I wanted to post a link to the auction, but it was over 6 months ago and it has disaapeared from eBay's server.
That's not what I meant.
However, when I started to do a bit of research into how and where to place an item I wished to sell (D.Net blocks as it happens), at first I couldn't even find a place to list it, but then the places I did find had total crap in them. Eg;
- FIND ANYONE, ANTIME FROM YOUR HOME COMPUTER! $6.00
- ~ ~ ~ ~ BANNED IN 27 COUNTRIES!!! ~ ~ ~ ~
:) $5.95 - {~-~} BILL GATES JUST CALLED ME CRYING {~-~} $5.99
- HACKS & CRACKS-NEW & SEALED!!! $7.80
- Make Ebay Your Career! + Free Software! WOW!! $4.95
This is a sample of items in the general software category. When this sort of stuff arrives in my inbox, I call it spam. I'm not going to waste my time or money competing with this junk.How can anyone possibly get addicted to this?
CJ.
Why do so many people use eBay? Their user interface SUCKS, they *CHARGE* to post auctions (even if nobody buys it), plus they charge a % if somebody DOES buy it. Personally, I use Yahoo because it's 100% free, has a much nicer user interface, and actually has good catagories to keep the auctions separated and so you can find what you are looking for. And it's not full of "make money fast, only $5!!!" actions or warez homemade cd sellers.
Plus eBay switched everything over to IIS instead of Apache after the server crashed for unknown reasons for 24 hours a couple times. Who knows what MS put in there, they are probably recording everybody's NSA_KEY that post software auctions.
See Man With Complete "Mama's Family" Video Library Never Going On eBay Drunk Again for our favourite news journal's cutting insights into this growing crisis.
"NEWTON, MA--In a solemn pledge to himself and the
world, Kevin Wollersheim, the new owner of a complete Mama's Family video library, announced Monday that he will "never, ever again" shop the online auction house eBay while inebriated."
--
Xenu loves you!
Collecting is a old habit, that gives many people a purpose in life. The main force behind ebay addiction (IMHO) is purpose. People like to having a strong feeling inside that drives them - and ebay, in paticular, collecting can give such a drive. Everyone can collect whereas many people can't be derive daily motivation from programming or singing or whatever occupation they have. With Collecting there is always a goal, but it's major strength is that the goal is unbounding.
I've seen, and been involved in ebay addiction all to often. But even before ebay i've witnessed collection addictions.
Joseph Elwell.
Crazy as it sounds, I'd like to see Rob eBay some Slashdot goodies for us to feed on. Heck, I'd bid. I'd even buy moderator points. YUMMY! 'Sides, can anyone imagine the fun that the Slashdot Effect would cause those poor guys? Better set up some eBay mirrors, Rob...
William Gibson had a very good piece in Wired on the same subject at http://www.wired.com/wired/archiv e/7.01/ebay.html. It also (very successfully and poetically, I thought) brought eBay addiction into a more far-reaching context. Plus it convinced me that he could do much, much more than sci-fi.
So this article is about a guy who has a $200/hr job yet prefers to make money (at $200/day) with his big eBay addiction, develops a hankerin' to collect "antique" electronic hand calculators, rubs elbows with Tom Arnold and was mere moments away from having the opportunity to doink Tori Spelling while at the same time having a completely dysfunctional relationship with wife and daughter? It just sounds way too "cool" for me to really believe it's at all true; more like a character from some Neil Stephenson short story.
It's maybe slightly insightful, but we've known that people get "Addicted" to certain websites for about as long as, well, around about as long as slashdot has been on the scene.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
I have gone through an ebay addiction myself, although not hardly as extreme as the one described in this article. I have since recovered, and manage to maintain a more normal approach to things, using auction services when necessary, but not obsessively slavering over them.
I have put a little thought into just what makes these creations so addictive. I think alot of it has to do with a more general class of websites -- those which are vaguely interactive. Just look at how many of us spend our time reading and replying to stuff on Slashdot. Now amplify it to an arena in which the whole purpose is interaction, and you get the drawing force that much more strengthening.
Next is the fact that ebay is open 24 hours a day, and your auctions can change any time during that period -- the compulsion is very strong to just check it when you wake up, then when you get home in the evening. But then you're sitting at work, and you wonder if you've won the auction on that widget and you check... then 10 minutes later wonder once more what the current bid is. Put millions of people into an almost instantly responsive environment, and you can easily buld an obsession.
Furthermore, as has been mentioned previously, there is the sheer quantity of *junk*, especially collectables, on these places. Collecting things is an age-old hobby -- Og the Cave Man probably collected interesting rocks he found sitting outside the opening to his cave.
Finally, there is the financial aspect. It is possible to get rick quick... and to pay much more than you could ever want for something. This, especially, combined with the previous collectables factor, I think lead to a very strong motivation to keep coming back, and stay on top of an environment which changes every minute of every day.
Combine all of this with an addictive personality, which easily obsesses on the smallest thing, and you have a recipe for a broken home.
Funny, I sit around a lot too much just hitting the "Restart" button on my NT box at work. Am I addicted? No. Am I ashamed? Yes.
It shouldn't take 5 pages of text to tell that this person has a serious addiction and needs help. *reloading slashdot a few more times* Hrrmm... no new articles. *reloading slashdot again* Huh. Still no new articles... *reloading slashdot*.... That guy should really seek help - he'll spend all his time online doing nothing if he doesn't break the habit...
--
That said, ebay in particular seems to have some odd cultural problems. Go read the evaluations people write of each other. What sound like perfectly ordinary transactions get reviews like "Fantastic! Great to do business with! 9 out of 10!!!" and Crom forbid you should tell the truth, namely, that everything went pretty much ordinarily. My girlfriend once bought some jewelry on ebay, and wrote a review of the seller like "completely satisfactory", and he wrote to her sounding very hurt, asking why she hadn't praised him more highly...
I have a problem. I'm addicted to trying to underbid people in the antique pocket watch section as well as the cheap PC system section (I want me a linux box). Have I tried going cold-turkey? Of course I have. Went cold-ebay for approximately 3 months... but you know what brought me back? trying to find a specific poster for my girlfriend. So instead of my girlfriend trying to save me from my addiction, because of her, I'm doomed to clicking the reload button until 2 am. EST because for some dumb reason, people on the West Coast always seem to set up their auctions at midnight west coast time which is 2 or 3 am east coast time (more of a reason to switch to a standard internet time).
But there is hope. There is a use for ebay that will allow you to surf around ebay and get stuff for free without having to bid. I've found, being a graphic designer, that I can find stock photographs for tons of weird stuff that NO STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY CD will carry. Looking for a picture of a shag rug? doubt you'll find it in Photodisc, but I guarantee you'll find a photo in ebay. looking for crazy pair of sunglasses? same thing. TONS OF IMAGES!!! YIPPEE!!!
That's how I got over my addiction, by chanelling my need to find junk at ebay with the ability to get all the stock photographs I could ever use.
Jerck Labs has announced that researchers associated with the development of Prozac have slightly altered the molecular structure of Prozac to increase it's efficacy against the obsessive/compulsive disorders exhibited by both Ebay and Home Shopping Channel uses. Bayzac, the name given this newly enhanced drug, will only be sold via the internet. Jerck Labs has indicated to stock market analysts that Bayzac will be the first drug targeted and sold to users via the medium they are abusing -- Ebay and the Home Shopping Channel. Bayzac will only be sold in these two forums. Initial reaction to Jerck Labs' announcement was muted on the NYSE. Market analyst Jim Beeglemeister attributes this to the unique marketing ploy of Jerck Labs. "It's like selling an anti-alcholism medication diluted inside a can of Budweiser." Beeglemeister has advised his customers to sell Jerck Lab securities as soon as possible. Jerck Labs has refused to comment. Fnord.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."