The degree of influence that the media has on people’s decisions is a topic that has been debated over time and again. Often, this topic comes about in regards to children, but what about adults? How much of what you hear and see directly effects what you decide to do?
Well to a very small degree I witnessed a great example of this. Thursday, September 27, following my late night ritual I was watching Conan O’Brien. Hilarious as usual, one of his producers stumbled on a few masks on ebay of several late night talk show hosts made by a native Alaskan Indian. There were three masks. They were made in replication of Jay Leno, David Letterman, and, of course, Conan O’Brien. What made this funny was that the first two were of pretty good likeness, but the one of Conan was SO OFF! It was just wrong. Everyone got a good laugh, and bit over.
Being the compulsive looker-upper that I am, I had to see it for myself. So I got on ebay and checked out the merchandise. The creator was asking $1,650 for Leno and Letterman, but only $1,000 for Conan (haha). Then, as I look distracted at other lovely items, my roommate comes in. I decided to show her Conan’s wonderful likeness and share the small story, but BAM, shockingly, the auction was at over five thousand dollars. At this point I am just thinking about how unbelievable it is. As I continue to refresh the page the price just jumped and jumped and, to my amazement, did not cease. By the next day, it was in the millions (approximately sixteen million). I could not believe that this guy’s life was just made by a simple joke. I was just in complete and utter astonishment.
Unfortunately some of the bidders were joking and they were removed from the auction, however the mask is still at approximately $16,000, and that is still a heck of a lot of money. Through all of this, I could not get over the thought that one man’s words can have such an impact. People are now willing to spend so much money on something that they didn’t want a few minutes ago. Think about the other uses of that money. How many amazing charities would have benefited tremendously from that kind of dough? Heck, I could have used money like that. College is rough. It does, however, make me wonder a lot less as to why so many large corporations are willing to spend millions of dollars on endorsement deals. Still, this was on lucky Eskimo! Hope he enjoys it.
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