Things aren’t cool anymore once everybody starts doing them, that’s the Law of Cool*. The same applies to selling one’s immortal soul on the Internet, which has entered let’s-throw-a-toga-party-like-they-did-on-Animal-House status**. Our latest soul peddler is from New Zealand, who learned like others before him that hosted auction websites don’t want anywhere near his soul or lack thereof.
But he did manage to schlep it off to a New Zealand pizza joint called Hell Pizza for just under four grand—not a bad price to pay for hella worldwide publicity, is it? As for 24-year-old Walter Scott, an appropriate asking price for a soul is pretty much set by the free market, and since “he had not found it to be much use,” then $3,800 is probably pretty good for nothing.
Well, not for nothing, an actual deed to his soul, which, if Hell Pizza has fine-tuned its irony sensors enough, should be framed and hung up at their Christchurch location; bad taste isn’t exactly a Hell Pizza concern, considering Hitler billboards and smoked salmon as a possible topping.
Scott, though not entirely original—in “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” Tommy Jones sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads just because he wasn’t using it—probably got a better price for his soul than his Internet predecessors, of which there are many. He learned, like the others, Internet auction sites everywhere won’t let a person sell their soul if they can help it; Scott brokered his deal with Hell Pizza offline.
Shortly after eBay became a household name, reports went out all over the media about a similar auction. eBay pulled it for good reason: In the event there is such a thing as an immortal soul, it violates eBay’s policy against selling body parts; if there isn’t such a thing, then it violates eBay’s policy against selling nothing. Such reasoning is sound enough, too, to prevent eBay from taking a stand one way or the other.
Pretty much every similar story ends the same way, with the auction site canceling the sale. Scott’s posting on TradeMe was pulled, the highest legitimate bid coming in at $456. Hell Pizza matched the highest bogus bid, a reward for bad behavior being the obvious thing to do.
In 2006, a Chinese man tried the same thing, attracting generous bids as high as $116.80 before the auction company pulled the plug, citing a trespass on God’s territory. He sold it eventually to a female journalist for an undisclosed price.
What do you wanna bet it was Ann Coulter?
At any rate, let this situation settle it forever: No, you can’t sell your soul on eBay, or any other auction site for that matter, and no, it’s not clever anymore, even if it nets you a few bills in the end guaranteed news coverage. Heck, they once sold the heck out of a pet rock; people will buy any old thing so long as you tell the right story about it. As for my soul, I think I’ll keep it. It comes in handy at karaoke.
*The companion law of the Law of Cool is the Law of Not Funny Anymore, which applies to catch phrases like “NOT!” “MILF,” and “You are the weakest link, goodbye.” If you didn’t think of it yourself, it’s only funny and cool when it’s an early or obscure reference to some burgeoning pop culture phenomenon—and no, monkeys won’t ever fly out of your butt, nor will you be funny for sarcastically suggesting they might.
**Not to be confused with girl-who’s-drunk-too-early-and-will-likely-lose-her-top status, which will be cool forever, any language, any culture.
