In our article “Do Make Believe Histories Add Value To Our Objects?“, we covered Rob Walker of Murketing and his work with the Significant Objects project. The experiment uncovers some insight on the nature of value, giving fictional history to mundane thrift store items through invented narratives about each object’s story. The items are sold on eBay, with full disclosure of their made-up stories, often at a final selling price of many times the original value.
The Significant Objects team has now followed up with Volume 2 of the project, a second round of objects with the proceeds going directly to the 826 National non-profit organization. The project has hit the $1000 mark as of last week.
Rob shares his thoughts and insights with us below:
What projects or ideas are currently inspiring you?
I’m inspired by John Norcross’s observation about the difference between inspiration and motivation: http://www.murketing.com/journal/?p=2275
Lately I’m motivated by many of the ideas that Lewis Hyde articulates in his book, The Gift.
Do you get a lot of feedback from buyers? Have there been any particularly interesting uses of the items people have purchased?
We do hear from some of our buyers, though not all. We have sold to people from Texas to Alaska, from New York to California, even to people in the UK. It can’t think of an example of a buyer who is “using” an object, in the traditional sense, although that would be cool. Most seem to display the object, and some of the most interesting examples have involved quite elaborate displays, like these two (http://bit.ly/7Zut5u, http://bit.ly/6CuSrT) from one buyer, and this one (http://bit.ly/5eAnS7) from another. Another buyer made a very short video with her object; it’s quite charming. We have an Owners Flickr Pool where people share images of their Objects in their new homes: http://www.flickr.com/groups/significantobjects/pool/
On the other hand there was one buyer who won two auctions in a row, and then told me outright he didn’t really want the objects! He just liked the stories/writers. I sent the objects anyway, and he said he liked the purple tape I used on the boxes, and was considering leaving them unopened. I’d LOVE pictures of that, but I haven’t heard from him. (I think it was “him,” not “her,” but it’s been a while and I may not be remembering correctly.) Anyway, that was certainly an interesting response!
Have there been any surprising responses to the project?
At the start we were surprised at analyses that asked if we had come up with a model for writers to support themselves — by selling stuff on eBay I guess? That wasn’t our intent, but, I don’t know, maybe those people are onto something.
And we’ve been very surprised at how many people have volunteered to write for the project.
And yes, there are occasional observers who accuse us of fraud in some way, despite everything. Most recently Dan Ariely wrote about the project, and while he was quite clear about it and explained everything, I noticed that some Reddit users who recommended his article were accusing us of dishonesty just the same — they clearly hadn’t looked at our site or any of our auctions, and I guess hadn’t even really read the post they were highlighting via Reddit. Maybe that doesn’t count as “surprising,” though.
On the other hand, early on there was one critique suggesting that it was a mistake on our part to be open about the invented nature of the stories, and that we should have presented things in more of a counterfactual-history manner and let the chips fall. I understand that point of view, but we had decided early on that we didn’t want to be anything that could be seen as a hoax or a prank.
What is your insight on the rational vs the irrational when it comes to decision-making and value?
Significant Object buyers are behaving quite rationally — each object we sell is transformed by our process into something that’s one of a kind. Moreover, the money goes to a good cause.
In contrast, a good deal of what goes on in the traditional marketplace is irrational. Standing in line for a new kind of mobile phone, paying a premium for a “limited edition” product that’s limited because the production run has been cut short for no reason other than to limit supply, buying a pre-”customized” version of a mass object in order to “express your individuality” — these things all strike me as far more irrational than paying $30 or $50 or even $100 or $200 for some curious thingamabob about which William Gibson, or Curtis Sittenfeld, or any of our contributors has invented a unique provenance. I wish I could bid on them myself. But I’m not supposed to.
Anyway, the thing about Significant Objects is that apart from the auctions, it creates a tremendous amount of value in the form of wonderful stories created by a wide variety of writers, and these are available for anyone to enjoy, for nothing. On some level I suspect that those who DO chose to bid are doing so to support this creation of value on a voluntary basis, in the same way that some people donate money to public radio or television, for instance. And what the winning bidders get back is a lot cooler than a totebag.
So by and large, compared to much of what goes on in the traditional marketplace, I think Significant Objects is a paragon of rationality.
Thanks Rob!
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