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Dana Montello Journal #5

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Alright, so instead of doing a parody site, I decided to have an internet auctioneer site do it "right". What I found was the entire process might be impossible to do correctly. Instead of trying to complicate matters, I wanted to simplify them, but ended up creating a false simplicity. For example, when you first go on Bidder, I wanted to show that there was a real "us" or Bidder, which is a company that makes a profit from each sale. I go out of the way to mention the cut so people can see that it is primarily a commercial entity (and not a community such that ebay tries to present itself as). I separated everyone into two groups of buyers and sellers that are based upon their desire on the site (I continually focused on desire instead of identity). However, I still greeted people with a welcome which creates a false personalization. I still refer to an us (store) and them (user). Drawing attention to it doesn't take it away. The alternative of creating a site that doesn't even welcome people or have a corporate "us" would be to make it so impersonal that no one would use such an "unfriendly" service. In short, I ended up creating a half measure that might seem to be forward with it's commercial nature and the fact we're making money off of users, but any commercial site at all (and all sites must be at some level) won't be able to escape from the operator/customer angle.

I also point out that categories are tricky and that sometimes things are hard to fit into categories, but in the end, I still have them! I could not think of a way to split merchandise up so that it would be easy to find. I point out that categories are user selected as if that is somehow suppose to pass the buck, but I have no idea how to present thousands of items without categorizing them. I tried to tend to descriptive categorization (size 14 cornflower blue dress), as opposed to prescriptive, but how is a toy different from a hobby except by looking at how it is used and what it is? I couldn't find a way to escape from it.

As mentioned, I tried to focus on a buying as a desire and not an identity. Other than usernames (which are self-applied), I wanted to create a site that didn't aggregate user data or try to predict on search history. I didn't ask if someone was a male or female or anything else, but rather what they're looking for. For clothing, I created a unisex system of translating all clothing measurements. However, in the end, I'm allowing the sale of gendered clothing and even if Bidder doesn't categorize, users will. I didn't want to command users not to categorize, but the default is they will. Do I have to take away seller agency in order to mitigate the social forces of categorization?

So, in the end, this experiment was a failure. I tried to be an "honest merchant" that drew attention to the problems of categorization or misapplying terms like community to a commercial website, but in the end, I couldn't create a page that did it right. I couldn't figure out how to both deconstruct identity and be a product that people could (should?) use.

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