Artificial Intelligence for sale
By Lisa Polisar
People will buy anything. I mean it. Think of the most idiotic thing a person could sell, and chances are there’s a market for it…somewhere.
Let’s start with the least palatable:
Grubs For Sale, 2 pounds for $10.00
Who would buy these disgusting, soil-dwelling, writhing eyeless scavengers? Well, the East Indians for one. Street merchants in Bombay fry butter grubs and serve them as a delicacy along with sea urchins and crickets. Australian bush people eat honey ants, caterpillars, and wichetty grubs as a staple to their mostly fibrous diet. Turn-of-the-century South American native peoples used grubs to make poison for the tips of their arrows. Grubs are also considered a standard food in both Haiti and Indonesia.
So then the same might be true of cow dung, discarded fingernails and empty milk cartons?
To prove my theory that people will, in fact, buy anything, I actually conducted two experiments on the capricious nature of the human personality. I like to call the first one the Magic Hair Brain Formula. It goes like this:
I invent an absurd theory, come up with a phony product, market it on a website and slap a price tag on it. And herein lies the beauty of every hare-brained scheme—PEOPLE WILL BUY ANYTHING.
That’s right…magic hair. So let’s pretend that I do a bunch of scholarly research and determine the chemical properties of hair are easily transferable from person to person. And, for instance, let’s say one of these chemical properties plays a vital role in human intelligence. So in other words, hair grown from the head of a genius possesses tremendous powers of intelligence.
The Bait: If you buy a segment of hair from a genius and have it surgically grafted onto your own scalp, it will make you more intelligent.
Cruel? Yes.
Marketing:
Sandra Davenport, age 47, CEO of a cosmetics company in Greenwich, Connecticut
IQ: 157
Hair: blonde, texture: coarse/thick
8-inch segment: $55/ 12-inch segment: $75
Hair weaving is a simple process that can be performed by any certified cosmetologist (about half of all licensed hair stylists are in this category).
The Kicker: You will raise your IQ within 30 days of implantation—Money Back Guarantee.
I went to one of those free webpage offers and, sure enough, got 150 hits the first day even with no links to search engines. The hair of a genius has the power to make you smarter. Blend it with your own hair and…voila:
§ Get that promotion you’ve been wanting
§ Score big on game shows
§ Impress family and friends
Don’t like Sandra? Well how about…
Josh, age 20, Computer Programmer
IQ 168
Hair: black, Texture: fine
4-inch segment (get this) $195
Would anyone pay $195 for four inches of hair? Sure enough, this one got more hits than stuffy Sandra Know-It-All’s page.
And Josh’s hair comes complete with testimonials:
§ “With Josh’s magic hair, I was like George Costanza when he gave up sex!”
§ “I suddenly had the confidence to apply to law school… and got in!”
Okay, so before I proceed, let me assure you that no money was actually exchanged in the sale of fake magic hair. (Remember, I’m primarily a FICTION writer). But it does speak volumes about the nature of people, doesn’t it?
Experiment #2:
I put an obscure ad in twenty small town newspapers across the country (and by “small town,” I mean like Waurika, OK and Mule Shoe, TX):
Cardboard, 50 lbs for $50.00
1-714-579-5595
Go ahead, guess. Ten calls? Twenty? Fifty? One hundred and nineteen calls the first day. Is there some secret conglomeration of cults that uses cardboard as a symbolic deity, or is there a covert sect of deviant construction workers who build corrugated houses? No, it’s a lot easier than that.
People are curious and, as a general rule, people are looking for something. Call it longing, call it baggage, but most people are looking outward to fill an internal void. And it’s not as tragic as it sounds. This doesn’t mean they’re necessarily depressed or unhappy, or unfulfilled, but just that they’re passively, actively looking for something.
Newspapers or those bulletin boards in the doorways of artsy-fartsy cafes are great places to look. Mostly ads for yoga and Pilates classes, but occasionally you come across a gem like one I found in the Flying Star recently:
Goats For Sale, 4 for $20, Complete
Aside from the meaning of the word “Complete,” I found myself wondering what a dairy farmer was doing in a chic urban coffee mecca. Had he thought about his target market at all?
The behaviors of our human species are fodder for endless analysis and entertainment. Look at the world we live in, but look beyond our thimble-sized existence. Push out from the microcosm of our work-work-work existence and take the time to study our species. Order a newspaper from County Kerry, Ireland or Muleshoe, Texas and see what’s important to those inhabitants. Do they have four goats for $20? No goats? How about sheep? What’s the going rate for sheep in Mule Shoe? Or for a brand new King James Bible in Chapel Hill or a pound of crawfish in Shreveport?
The world is not small. It’s big and it’s expanding. Be curious. Buy hair off the internet. Sell goats at Flying Star. You never know what might happen. |
