After negotiations, and some reverberations across social media and news websites, the item was re-listed with a revised description and a personal guarantee that half the proceeds would be donated to the Cancer Council of Australia. Bidding began again at $0.99 and reached AU$20300 with 15 hours remaining as of the morning of June 1st. However, just as the seller and the Cancer Council were set to become $10000 better off, eBay again removed the listing citing another, but different breach of the terms and conditions.
The second breach is less specific than the first and relates to the auction site's "concerns" about the seller's selling activity, stating to the seller in an email informing him of the suspension of his account, that: "We’re not comfortable with your selling practices or business model." Given that this is the seller’s first sale on eBay, this assumption can only be based on the listing of 'the'. Further negotiations ensued but no resolution where the seller could redeem the $20300 raised could be reached. This is in spite of the fact that there were at least two established eBay stores with good feedback making legitimate bids of thousands of dollars on the item.
This stand-off between eBay and the seller exposes a number of tensions related to online transactions and digital culture more generally. The theoretical trope of ‘the virtual’ was a popular metaphor used to discuss the nature of digital technology around the turn of the 21st century but has, for the most part, become less appropriate as we become more comfortable with the role that digital technology plays in our everyday lives today. The metaphor of virtuality often implied a sense of loss of materiality at the hands of digital, but as this case proves the now dated binary of real and virtual, based on the assumption that the digital is immaterial, is not as clear cut as we once assumed.
The seller, Sean Powderly who goes by the eBay username, 'sweatyman', was given an assurance from eBay after the first removal that the new listing would not be in any danger of removal. The removal nevertheless occurred and fallout will no doubt play out through social media and other news outlets which eBay would surely expect. But why they would want to be seen to be denying the Cancer Council a $10000 donation in that same context is a little baffling.
What, then, is being protected here? Why the effort and risk of social media backlash to stamp out what was to become both an act of charity and reward for an original idea? If eBay can sell intangible objects such as an air guitar for US$5.50 or the "The Meaning of Life" for US$3.26, or even tangible objects with inflated value like a grilled cheese sandwich with markings that apparently resembled the Virgin Mary for US$28000, then why not a torn piece of paper inscribed with the word 'the'?
The answer has to do with value itself. The air guitar and "The Meaning of Life" are really unproblematic because of the low prices achieved. The Virgin toastie has an absurd value but we have learned to forgive a little irrationality when it comes to religion. The seemingly disproportionate cash value that has been ascribed to this piece of paper, however, rings alarm bells for some reason. Arguments about the ascription of value to objects are not new, particularly in the art world where a 1961 work by Italian artist Peiro Manzoni, entitled Artist's Shit -- which is exactly that, Manzoni's own excrement sealed in a can -- sold at a Sotheby's auction for €124000. And Powderly has been called an artist by at least one news outlet. But the case of Manzoni is relevant because while his work can be seen as an example of institutional critique, poking fun at the absurdity of arbitrarily ascribed value in the art market, it can also be seen as a more deeply critical engagement with the politicisation of monetary value within the world economy.
Piero Manzoni, Artist's Shit, 1961
When Manzoni first canned and sold his excrement he did so according to the price of gold at the time. The price of each can therefore fluctuated with the market value of gold. The market forces that govern how much gold is worth at any one time are as arbitrary as the value ascribed to a work of art or any object for that matter, including a piece of paper, even if it is paper money. Money itself is virtual, it is "simply a set of ideas" based on the agreement of the two parties engaged in the exchange, as economist, Felix Martin explains. Martin discusses how new digital currencies like Bitcoin are no more virtual than so-called "real" money because a real note is simply a token of "transferable credit"... "you can't actually see or touch a pound or a dollar - rather than a pound coin or a dollar bill - any more than you can see or touch a Bitcoin."
Bitcoin as Martin points out is not new in its virtuality but operates on essentially the same principle as real money. The idea that it is a virtual currency stems solely from the assumption that its state as digital money is physically different to that of paper money. Physically different they may be, but they both share virtuality as an inherent trait. And, right now at least, both are valid for various online transactions for goods and services.
There may in fact be undisclosed legal reasons why a $20000 transaction for a piece of paper has been unceremoniously killed off by eBay, but on the surface it seems that, in that same way that nature abhors a vacuum, eBay cannot tolerate the virtual accumulation of value beyond their own control. Real auction houses have a high degree of control over how much works of art sell for. That is, how much virtual value they accumulate. In fact this is the primary function of auction houses like Sotheby’s, with their regular headline making 'highest price paid for...' sales. As a digital auction house, eBay's operation is a little more chaotic than the tightly controlled environment of a Sotheby’s auction. Nevertheless, it appears as if eBay is attempting to exact some kind of control over something that is beyond their control, beyond anyone’s control – the value of a piece of paper. The refusal to rectify the removal of the second listing of 'the' is a refusal to grant it any sense of legitimacy. Such an acknowledgement would be an admission of a loss of that control.
Perhaps eBay thought that the second listing would not attract the same level of interest, perhaps they assumed that the worthless but expensive piece of paper would die an unproblematic death, perhaps the market would take care of it as it does everything else in our capitalist society. But what is certain, and what this piece of paper has demonstrated, is that value is arbitrary, value is political, and value, digital or otherwise, is virtual.
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