Something attracting quite a bit of attention on the net at the moment is an incident involving a 25-year-old homeless man in Japan who put himself up for sale as an “item” on the Yahoo! Auctions website. Anyone winning the bid would in theory have been able bring the man into their home and provide him with accommodation.
The homeless man is thought to have been living rough as a consequence of his large debts and had been unable to make payments towards his pension or national health insurance. In the details section of the same auction, the man made clear that the type of bidder who may be interested in his auction is:
“Someone who is looking for a friend and can let their room out, or someone looking for a boyfriend who can do the housework.”
After reading this far, many of you may be thinking “good for him,” or, “what an ingenious idea,” but unfortunately this is where the fun ends. Having been discovered by the site’s admin, the ‘item’ listing was taken down shortly after going live. However, during the brief time it did go live, the man received a staggering 600 bids.
The homeless man also has a personal homepage and Twitter account, so it’s quite possible that, even after the auction was deleted, many interested people may have contacted him and even offered him accommodation.
The man described himself simply:
Height: 173 cm
Weight: 57 kg
Blood type: A
Even with so little information available to bidders, at the point of being taken down the bidding had reached 65,000 yen (US$665) mark.
Making use of the internet to get help in this way is novel to say the least, and is certainly less humiliating that asking passersby on the street for cash or a place to stay. What’s more, presenting the auction more as something orientated towards a person looking for a friend, partner or someone to talk to, it must have looked like a rather attractive package to many.
Here’s a sample of the comments some Twitter users made after hearing about the incident.
“Looks like the guy’s selling his body.”
“I can’t believe it went live as a real auction.”
“When you think that it started off at 1 yen, to reach such a figure is quite amazing.”
“Unbelievable to think that a homeless guy went this far in the first place.”
“It’s difficult to get my head around it!”
“I laughed when I saw on the item description that a refund was also possible.”
On a parting note, for anyone just that little bit interested, the man’s home site can be found here. We hope this guy finds a home of his own soon!
Source: Byoukan Sunday