- Jeff Luppino-Esposito


In yesterday's post I laid down the facts on a man named Ian Usher and his plan to sell his entire life on ebay as one package deal this June. His website and the idea are extremely well-structured, providing all the practical answers for the mortgage, the job, the potential immigration issues and much more, but the entire concept leaves a tremendous amount of room for speculation. What kind of person would buy another man’s life? What will become of the buyer and the seller in the future? First and foremost, however—-Why is this jet-skiing, home-owning, accent-bearing Australian selling his
life?

In the appropriately titled “Why” section of the website, Usher tells a story of the better days with a woman named Laura. Ian describes Laura as, “the best girl in the world.” “I loved her with all my heart, and she loved me back too.” After being together for 15 years, the couple moved to Perth, Western Australia and bought the beautiful home that Usher is now dying to escape. Trouble in paradise.

“After over twelve years together and five years of fantastic married happiness, I was hit with a bolt from the blue. I was blindsided at about 11pm on a Wednesday evening by a shocking and awful discovery”

This is the extent of the description that Usher offers us about what actually happened. Between the lines of other sections we find that Laura is still alive and that the pair has simply separated. Usher remains completely respectful to her and constantly compliments her on multiple fronts, making this ‘shocking and awful’ experience all the more confusing to pinpoint. Friend and fellow PopSense contributor, Stelios Phili, discussed with me essentially every possible event that could meet the description of ‘shocking and awful’ on a Wednesday night for a husband to encounter. I’ll spare our family-friendly audience any details that may or may not have included the milkman, farm animals, a production crew, and/or duct tape.

Either way, Usher credits the separation with Laura as the principle reason for his planned departure from this lifestyle. Everything in his current life reminds him of this past that he can no longer live in, and its time to move on. I guess this is one way to do it.

So take the photographs… and abandon your identity

Obviously this seems a bit drastic, especially considering how grateful Ian is for the things and people in his life that are now going up for sale. The website is accented by tons of videos which prove exactly that appreciation (Warning: Spend too much time watching the videos and reading the supplementary life-tracking blog and you’ll become Ian Usher without ever paying a dollar). Usher describes these videos as “my own impression of Perth”.

Does Ian Usher’s impression of Perth become nameless future buyer’s impression of Perth?

Here begins the endless line of questions.
Will the buyer of Ian Usher’s “life” become Ian Usher? Does he act as the website tells him to? Does he truly become friends with Ian’s friends?

Who can we imagine making such an absurd investment online?
In the spirit of the website, it would be nice to see someone of similar socioeconomic status to Ian making the purchase and really assuming the lifestyle.

But, in order for this to happen, for one to truly purchase a life in its entirety, would this buyer then have to turn around and sell his own life, thus creating a ceaseless cycle of soul selling?

His friends seem confident, including in a letter of support on the website where one optimistically states, “We’re not about to loose a friend, we’re looking forward to making new ones.”

Realistically, this probably won’t be the case. Someone willing to make this large of a purchase, more than likely, wouldn’t be interested in really abandoning the life they currently occupy for one of lesser socioeconomic value. Unless, of course, they too just simply want to get out.

You go your way, I’ll go mine

Ok, so you still think this whole idea is crazy?
Well, you’re not entirely alone.

Man puts his life up for sale, gives out all of his contact information, encourages visits to his home, films his entire existence all for being 1 out of 3 billion men who feel they have been wronged by a woman in some way.

Whereas the survey section does show 24,000 people calling it an “Awesome Idea!” (myself included), there are still 6,500 people calling it a “Pretty dumb idea”, 10,000 trendily referring to it as “e-nonsense”, and 23,000 other smarmy skeptics simply responding, “Interesting…”.

Still, the Guestbook is both extremely supportive and overly personal. Something about the project’s openness seems to inherently encourage readers towards a similar willingness to connect with Usher, the other viewers of the site, and themselves. The discussion forum has also stimulated some serious self-examination and a collective effort at making sense of this whole project.

Though Usher’s intent seems pure, one can’t help but raise an eyebrow (or two) at his survey question of, “Could you do it?” Alright, tough guy, is that a challenge? Ok, ya got me, I wouldn’t sell everything that defines who I am on an internet auction… especially in a buyer’s market.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the idea, I just don’t appreciate the phrasing.
Regardless, anyone who can use YouTube and Ebay this effectively is a friend of mine.

The Lingering Questions, Some Closure, and Poe

“I love the adventurous nature of the project, and am excited about a new start”
Less than 30 days to go, we can only imagine that this very excitement that first riled Usher into action is only growing stronger each day.

We still must ask questions, for our own sake.
Will he actually get a new start?
Is he really just trying to prove a point?
What happens to him next?
Can he truly part from everything that he once had, everything that he currently is?
Does one need to make a purchase or a sale to get a new life?

I said in my first piece that he was disproving life’s value by giving it a value. But is it really up to him at this point? It’s in our hands now, the intrigued buyer willing to give everything up and do the very same thing, the millionaire trying to escape his sphere, the venture capitalist with a purely monetary interest. We are the ones setting the value, not Ian Usher. He’s leaving the corruption to us.

And so we turn to beloved UVA-dropout, Edgar Allen Poe and his The Fall of the House of Usher. It seems creepily fitting that a tale of the unidentifiably frightening (in classic Poe fashion) shares its name with our life salesman. Suffering a Roderick-like “morbid acuteness of the senses,” Ian Usher feels the very presence of the woman that is indirectly making him sell his own life away. But he must escape before he slips into Madeline’s illness, that of, “a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person” in this life entrenched in the past.

It is the uncanny, the Freudian concept of that which is so familiar, yet notably strange so as to produce an uncomfortable feeling. Ian Usher, a young person like you or me, content in his existence, a working man, with friends, a home, and things to help define himself by. Read his webpage and you will know him well, for his lifestyle is clearly not foreign to any of us. Yet this same man, who could very well be you or me, decides that none of these things matter anymore, and that he will leave them behind. Ian Usher is your friend, your Uncle, your neighbor, yourself. He is so similar, yet his action places him in some realm that is beyond our understanding (or our want to understand).

On the top of Ian Usher’s webpage, near the flashing banner that tells us when he will be “departing this life,” there is a slide of children’s drawings. Sloppily colored yet oddly perfect, there is the jetski riding a disproportionately large wave, a motorbike flying down a hill. A square home with a triangle rooftop, friends holding hands, drinking to good health, enjoying the warmth of a hot tub and good company. Finally, a man, parachuting in from the heavens, coming from nowhere and becoming someone he is not. Squeezed into the frame of the wider-than-life front door awaits his future, stick figures with open arms as the sun literally smiles down on them all.

Everything about it is so unrealistic, childlish… innocent, pure.
So I ask, just as Ian asks on that same flashing banner…
“Will you be the owner of this life?”