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Sell a Forgery On eBay by teucer, The Orange Flag
May 3rd, 2008 7:24 PM
Attempt I: eBay
I whipped up an official-looking certificate of authenticity to sign as various celebrities. However, because I quickly found that signing paper is far easier than signing solid objects (you can put a real signature under paper as a guide, though you still want a secondary one as a reference) I wasn't sure what I'd be authenticating. At the suggestion of Levitating Potato, I went meta - the certificate was amended to verify its own authenticity. I also decided to play with anachronism; it bears some fairly hard-to-come-by signatures from prior to the invention of the certificate of authenticity.
I listed it on eBay with a simple listing advertising rare eighteenth-century signatures. It's signed (so I said) by George III of England, Sam Adams, a "P. Harmon", and someone with a less legible signature whose initials appeared to be Z.B. (though the Z could be a G, and the B could be an R) The ZB signature is actually that of President George W. Bush, done with a fountain pen with a pointed nib (same as I used for the others) to look more like the style of the era when the other two non-me ones would have to be from. In my eBay listing, I stated that it had not been authenticated and due to the improbable nature of the document was being sold as a novelty only. After all, I wanted to sell a forgery, but not to actually defraud anybody.
Nobody bid. I might've had better chances if I wrote the listing better, but the seller fees make it not really worthwhile to test this if you don't really have a desirable product. Time to invoke the "or as you see fit" clause, I suppose.
Attempt II: Someone
For about two months I didn't give forgery much thought. But then the Rasputin's Penis task went live and it occurred to me that I had a prior completion sitting on my desk. I made some noises to that effect, basically because I wished I had *something* to show for my impeccable craftsmanship (uh, not exactly) on the CoA. However, I entered into a private message dialogue with Someone in which I attempted to interest him in a custom-made forged signature. I offered to do just about anybody.
I'd say that would've been a completion, though perhaps not one worth 250 points. However, he didn't get back to me (at least for a while); I'm guessing he decided against blowing a couple bucks on a fake signature, and I can't say as I blame him.
And then I forgot about the task for about another two months. But good things happened afterwards...
Attempt III: CG0
In the wee hours of the morning on April 20, 2008, I found myself in Chicago, speaking with Dax at the finish line of Journey to the End of the Night. I had been a staff chaser, and so I remarked to him that unlike the runners (who all got a prize, if successful) I was without any souvenir other than my red chaser ribbon. Which I asked him to autograph. He did, not knowing I was going to use that as the original with which to make a forgery...
Then a few days later I contacted Iaman, about the entirely unrelated matter of yeast. While we talked online, the subject of SF0 memorabilia came up, and he proposed that we barter. I had offered a more conventional sale, involving money, but I decided his counteroffer seemed reasonable - and so Iaman agreed to purchase from me for the low low price of his flag, a falsified quarter of The Villain's bandanna - signed by Dax to prove its authenticity, of course.
The next morning I purchased the essential black bandanna, tore it into fourths, and signed one as Dax. I decided that the forgery wouldn't fool anybody if it weren't tainted with at least a little bit of all-corrupting evil, so naturally I had to buy it at Wal-Mart. Then I mailed Iaman his yeast and his bandanna part.
Two days later the payment arrived in the mail - a flag, as promised, plus a penny of additional payment in the form of actual currency. I sterilized the flag - after all, I know where that thing's been. Then I waited for him to do something with it, and then I posted this praxis.
Iaman
This is Iaman in the bandanna I sent him. (Picture stolen from his Banality of Evil praxis.)
CoA
This was my first attempt - a certificate of authenticity signed by Sam Adams, George III of England, myself (badly), and George W. Bush, whose signature appears to read "Zw Be".
An autographed ribbon
It's hard to see it, but there's a signature on that ribbon.
An enhanced ribbon
I traced the ballpoint pen with a darker pen so it would show up better when I held it against a light with a black bandanna over it. Now you can see what a real Dax Tran-Caffee signature looks like!
Could this really be a piece of the most evil artifact known to playerkind?
No. No it couldn't.
Dax's bandanna!
Here the signature has been duplicated on the bandanna in white-out pen.
What's this?
An envelope from CG0? Could my payment be inside?
A penny and a flag!
Not such a great deal for the real bandanna - but considering that it's a fake, I think I came out of this ahead.
And now it's time...
...to pour bleach in the sink.
Sterilizing the flag.
After all, I know where that's been.
12 vote(s)
Iaman
5
Jellybean of Thark
5
Sparrows Fall
5
Scarlett
5
The Animus
5
Haberley Mead
5
Adam
5
Optical Dave
5
GYØ Ben
5
Lincøln
5
teh Lolbrarian
5
GYØ Daryl
Terms
(none yet)20 comment(s)
This is worth a lot of points, but the final plan was pristine. I actually remember over-hearing you getting your chaser ribbon signed, and thinking it was a clever idea. Turned out to be way more clever than I thought.
Honestly I don't think either of the two earlier plans would have legitimately been worth 250 points. So in hindsight I am glad they failed.
The instructions say:
Forge a work of art and then sell it on eBay (or as you see fit).
After failing to make a successful eBay sale, I invoked the "as you see fit" clause - though I wouldn't have felt good about a completion that didn't at least involve an attempt at using eBay.
But...
You didn't sell it...
You bartered, which is not the same...
My original asking price was in dollars, and we haggled in a fashion that demonstrates how price is not entirely definable by a single number.
Is a salesman who expects to be paid in dollars but accepts beef jerky as payment for the goods they sell any less of a salesman than they were before they took the jerky? And is the buyer who offers them such a deal any less of a buyer? I would assert that they are not. And thus, I am a forgery salesman (though far from a successful one) - and it happens that I accept unorthodox payment in certain instances.
I'm confronted by the usual, "holy cow this task is worth a lot of points" conundrum.
If we take points seriously and argue that every five points of task value is worth a vote, then this thing has already got the equivalent of 62 votes. While it's really good, it doesn't deserve more than that, if you ask me.
On the other hand, if we're playing for votes, then there's only twelve of them here. And, even without taking into account recent vote inflation, this much effort certainly deserves more than that.
Once again, I'm confused, and I'm going to put off making a decision. But, the tasking is top notch.
Here's my eight cents.
I'm normally a fan of Doctor Harmon's tasking. But in this case, I think the spirit of the task has been skirted too much for the value assigned to it.
The photo in the task description is of a somewhat famous sculpture. So the spirit of the task is to deceive someone (preferably a stranger) by selling them a forgery of a recognizable work of art via an established auction medium, like eBay.
I don't see how trading someone a flag for a piece of bandana with a forged signature on it really fits this task.
That being said, I commend the Doctor on deceiving Iaman into trading his hard-won flag for a piece of bandana with Dax's forged signature on it. That was well done, but not worth 250 points, IMHO.
Just one note on what you've said, Lank. There is nothing in the task that mentions or calls for deceit. Going up on e-bay with a big sign saying "this is a forgery... please buy it" is equally valid to the letter and spirit of the task (in fact, convincing someone to buy something knowing it is a forgery ahead of time might be worth MORE than pulling the wool over their eyes).
That's how I see it, anyway. Carry on.
For the record, since the question has been raised:
Part of the point with all of my attempts including the final one was to produce and sell forgery without deceiving the buyer - a task I consider rather more challenging than actual fraud, as few people want an acknowledged forgery (as the write-up of this praxis demonstrates). When I posted the original attempt on eBay, the auction mentioned the highly dubious nature of the document, though I didn't say outright "I FORGED THESE SIGNATURES YOU FOOLS." And when I was corresponding with Someone it was in connection with a pretired task that was all about creating fake artifacts, so I offered him a made-to-order forgery. (I seem to recall discussing it with one or two other players also, but he was the only one where they happened in private messages so that I still have a record of the conversation to remind me who it was. I think another may have been Quincy, but I'm not certain.)
And then when discussing it with Iaman, I started out vague. I asked if he was interested in some potentially valuable SF0 memorabilia. However, as we discussed his interest in this most important of SF0 artifacts, I did mention well before we settled on a price that it would be a forgery. He was still interested, and a sale occurred.
The only person I deceived, except very briefly, in working on this task was Dax.
That said, Lank, I certainly agree that this wasn't the way the task was intended to be completed. But personally I have never felt entirely constrained by such; after all, I don't think whoever thought up Door Installation had any idea what possibilities they were releasing, or that the creators of Chrononautic Exxon foresaw the idea of psychologically torturing a clock - and I absolutely love that completion of Fight the Future, and Doorhenge is widely considered if not the greatest praxis yet then at least on the short list.
.... So..... How bout that big red X up there....?
Edit: And wait, where is the bot that tells us this task phaled?
That bot doesn't tell you a task has failed. It tells you that a task has been flagged by your fellow players. Glasnost is over, friends, and the ФСБ doesn't leave calling cards.
So why does this have a Big Red X?
Did it get flags from players?
Or was it a gang of Rubins?
It wasn't a gang of Rubins. One of those hit all of my tasks at some point, but they didn't flag any of them enough for an X. Specifically, they flagged everything four times; this completion has five on it last I checked. And I'm not certain, but I think my Rubins hit after this already had the X and that they bypassed it. I think the five flags it's sporting are all legit. I might be mistaken.
And I understand those flags. I don't agree with them, obviously - I would never submit anything I myself regarded as flagworthy - but different people have different standards for what merits a vote, and what merits a flag, and having a multitude of different approaches is part of what keeps the game from being entirely predictable.
I confess I'm not 100% certain the five flags were enough to X the task, though, because normally when that happens the SF0 Daemon posts. I think there's about a 90% chance this X is entirely legit, a 5% chance somebody flagged it for real and the gang of Rubins applied precisely four to it like they have to many of my Insatiability tasks, and a 5% chance it's a victim of the same bug that's been discussed extensively on this praxis and has affected at least a couple others.
The fact that people disagree with me isn't something I mind, nor is the fact that they express it by flagging the praxes they find disagreeable. That's how flags are supposed to work. But I do confess that small chance that this isn't supposed to have gotten flagged away does bother me a little. So if there were a way of knowing for sure that it's really supposed to be red Xed, I'd love to be told as much.
Holy crap, I just realized that I've been forged.
Good thing this praxis got flagged, or else impersonating me might become a fad.
Wow. I was assuming you had noticed by now.
Besides, impersonating you is *so* last era.
Doktor Harmon, I cannot believe you fooled me so utterly.
I have been thrown into shame at this revelation, and I do not know what I can say.
Regardless, the fact that it came from Wal-Mart explains the evil that took over me.