{"id":3,"date":"2005-12-02T03:04:40","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T20:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/?p=3"},"modified":"2006-11-06T05:21:48","modified_gmt":"2006-11-05T21:21:48","slug":"vrial-ebay-auctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"Viral eBay Auctions"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s interesting to see the effect generated by a cleverly written eBay auction. Recently there was a pair of leather trousers up for auction. These normally would get lost among the other thousands of clothing items for offer. Instead, this auction turned into a bit of meme, which in turn, attracted a lot of attention. So much so that it ended up getting requests from a magazine editor wanting to use it in print.<\/p>\n

Why is this interesting? It illustrates the power of breaking out of the norm, and creating a Purple Cow<\/a> auction on eBay. <\/p>\n

You can see the auction here<\/a>.
\nJust in case it has been taken down, here’s the first few lines : <\/p>\n

You are bidding on a mistake.<\/em><\/p>\n

We all make mistakes. We date the wrong people for too long. We chew gum with our mouths open. We say inappropriate things in front of grandma.<\/p>\n

And we buy leather pants.<\/p>\n

I can explain these pants and why they are in my possession. I bought them many, many years ago under the spell of a woman whom I believed to have taste. She suggested I try them on. I did. She said they looked good. I wanted to have a relationship of sorts with her. I\u2019m stupid and prone to impulsive decisions. I bought the pants.<\/p>\n

The relationship, probably for better, never materialized. The girl, whose name I can\u2019t even recall, is a distant memory. I think she was short.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s interesting to see the effect generated by a cleverly written eBay auction. Recently there was a pair of leather trousers up for auction. These normally would get lost among the other thousands of clothing items for offer. Instead, this auction turned into a bit of meme, which in turn, attracted a lot of attention. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-fringes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}