When the internet came along it changed everything.  Such a statement is usually hyperbole but in the case of the internet its impact could not be overstated.  I’m sure most people remember their first internet enabled PC.  I do.  I was in the seventh grade and while this was my first PC it wasn’t my first experience with the internet.  My best friend growing up had such a toy for awhile.  His dad was a tech-minded person that always wanted to have the latest and greatest so they had all of that stuff.  I had already seen a good amount of what the internet had to offer a 12 year old boy, and it was mostly porn.  For a kid at that age, having the ability to access adult media was like having a key to the Garden of Eden.  And back then all that was really available were still pictures.  They would be labeled something generic such as “big boobs” or “lesbians” and you’d sit around for a couple of minutes waiting for the thing to load.  And it was awesome.  I can’t imagine what the kids of today must feel with high-speed connections and streaming video.  Talk about sensory overload.

Of course, the internet isn’t just for pornography.  Arguably, one of the internet’s greatest gifts to mankind is that glorious website full of people’s unwanted junk, eBay.  Depending on how you engage eBay, it’s either the greatest thing ever or a necessary evil.  As someone who never sells on eBay and doesn’t have to deal with the myriad of fees and obvious favoritism towards buyers, I love it.  Sure when I lose out on an auction with three seconds to go I utter every curse I can think of at my screen but in the end I always come back.

Since eBay’s obvious successes many have tried to imitate it.  Amazon lets people sell their stuff on its site, though not auction style.  Craig’s List is even more open serving as more of an online classifieds section, just hope the people you meet on there aren’t maniacs.  I don’t think any other sites have done as good a job as eBay though.  The auction format is fantastic as it allows demand to dictate the price.  Unless you’re completely inept when it comes to listing an item you’re going to get a fair price for your it.  Granted, it’s not always apparent at the time and some sellers may even try to manipulate the price of their item by having dummy bidders jack it up.  And even after the auction has run its course, some sellers may feel like they got the short end of the stick, but that’s not really true.

Baseball cards were huge when I was a kid.  My cousins and I would make pilgrimages to the local convenience store for packs of cards.  We would tear through them tossing aside the mediocre players in search of our favorite stars or anything that said “Rookie,” because you never knew who the next big star would be.  At the time, numerous price guides existed that kids would read as gospel.  If the magazine says the card is worth fifty bucks then its worth fifty bucks.  Over the years though, people soon realized that 99% of baseball cards were worthless.  Over-produced and cheap to begin with, the demand was never there.

Most people still have a card mentality when it comes to their wares but really an item is only as valuable as the market dictates.   And in this case, eBay is the market.  If you own a rare piece of music and want to know what it’s worth, don’t consult a price guide just look it up on eBay and see what it’s going for.  That’s what you can expect, give or take, your item to fetch if you were to sell it that day.

Whenever I’m in the market for something of that nature, I like to first do my homework by letting a few auctions go just to gauge an item’s worth.  Sometimes though an item is so rare it becomes difficult to do so.   Just today I was tempted to place a bid on a trinket of sorts I had been eye-balling for years.  Just another piece of music memorabilia.  The problem was the seller started the bidding at $350.  Now, I would expect this particular item to go for a couple hundred, but $350 was on the extreme end.  It had been a long time since I had seen one of these so I really had little to fallback on in terms of pricing and old eBay auctions are only viewable for about 90 days so it’s not like I could go back through their archives to figure it out.  I decided to wait it out and see what happened and, lo and behold, the auction expired with no one placing a bid.  The market had decided that, while this piece is rare and normally in demand, $350 was just an unreasonable price.  The decision to not bid was a wise one on my part.  While I don’t have an item I covet, I also didn’t needlessly pay a premium for said item and if I’m patient I may be rewarded down the line.

Instances like the one described above make me shake my head.  Why would a seller post an item at anything other than zero to kick off their auction?  Well, I know why and it’s because they have a pre-conceived idea of what the item’s worth is and are afraid to sell it for less.  Perhaps the person paid close to what they’re offering it for and are trying to avoid taking a loss, which is inherently foolish.  As someone who collects vinyl I can safely say it’s actually not the greatest investment.  Sure there’s a lot of records out there worth a lot of money but I’m going to let you in on a secret – it almost never appreciates.  If you go out and spend $500 on a rare piece of vinyl today, chances are that five years from now it’s going to be worth about $500 give or take a few bucks for inflation.  Even in today’s crummy economy, most of these items are still selling for what they commanded a few years ago.  So long as the item is kept in good condition, it is unlikely to depreciate but appreciation cannot be expected.  That’s why it’s inherently foolish to make hobby type purchases as investments.  The only instance where something like a record will increase in value is if you do something to increase its value, like getting it autographed for example.

In a perfect world, eBay wouldn’t allow listers to place a starting bid on an item.  It just defeats the purpose.  If a seller truly wants to sell their item that’s what they should do.  Guaranteed, even your most useless piece of junk will get at least one person’s attention who’s willing to buy it for a pittance.  If you’re scared that your item isn’t worth what you think it is then don’t list it.  Or do what everyone else does and gouge people with shipping costs.

Ask someone what their favorite color is, or ask yourself.  Mine is blue, why?  I have no idea.  How can someone answer that?  Perhaps a psychologist might try to draw parallels between a color’s properties and your personality.  Blue is kind of funny in that it can be both dark and bright.  I trend darker in my preference but does that say anything about me?  I don’t think it does, but I don’t have a degree in psychology.

Some people might give a reason.  Maybe their favorite color is tied to a fond memory.  The color of the wallpaper in their first room, a favorite shirt, or something that reminds them of a departed relative.  When I look at things in my past it’s easy to find the color blue.  I am, after all, a male and blue is often the color most people associate with young boys so blue was everywhere in my childhood.  I had a quilt my aunt made me that was my favorite blanket, but was it my favorite because it was blue or for another reason?  I was a devoted fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and my favorite was Leonardo because he wore a blue bandana and wielded twin katanas (that looked nothing like actual katanas, just had to get that off my chest).  I can even remember getting my first TMNT action figures, the original Leo, Donatello, and Krang (who came with that walker and not his “body” that would show up around episode 5 or 6 of the cartoon).  When I bought them I had yet to see an episode so I knew nothing about the personalities of the characters and was going strictly based on visuals.  Why anthropomorphic turtles appealed to me and an entire generation of boys is beyond my comprehension.

Which takes me back to my initial question of why we like what we like.  When the question is asked of something more dynamic than a color we as human beings can often give a reason but how often is that opinion just revisionist history?  Sometimes things just appeal to us for no reason beyond that they just do and only when thinking about it in more detail do we find reasons to ascribe to our thoughts.  I don’t trust these reasons and consider most to be revisionist in nature.  That’s not to say our likes and dislikes are a total mystery.  A person may like a particular band because it sounds like another he or she is familiar with.  Or someone may enjoy a film because it’s from a genre, director, or actor they have enjoyed in the past.  It’s when you try to get to the root of all tastes that things become muddled.

My earlier thought that a psychologist could potentially yield some light may have come across as dismissive but in truth I do feel some of what we like is dependent upon personality.  Maybe something as simple as a color preference cannot be traced to a personality trait, but how about music?  For me personally I tend to be somewhat rebellious in thought, though not always in action.  If someone tells me I have to like something my initial reaction is to dislike or find fault with that something.  This thought process is probably why I enjoy heavy metal so much, or is at least partially responsible.  Metal is rebellious in nature so it makes sense.  Maybe my hypothesis is totally wrong but I doubt it.

All of this leads me to think that why we like what we like is mostly a pointless question.  It serves little purpose why someone likes something, as long as that something isn’t destructive who cares?  Are some people just born to prefer vanilla to chocolate and vice versa or did something in their life influence their, in this case, literal tastes?  My sister used to use the excuse as a child when she didn’t like how a particular food tasted was to say that she had different taste buds.  Perhaps that is true, after all, no one can trade tongues and see how things taste for someone else but my assumption is to think that’s a bunch of bull.  Vanilla is vanilla, chocolate is chocolate, no matter who the taster is.

A popular and seemingly endless debate in the world of politics and religion is in regards to homosexual lifestyle and marriage.  Homosexuals contend they’re born the way they are insisting their sexual preference is biological.  Lots of funding has been devoted to scientific study to try and find a biological consistency to explain this and still the question is unsettled.  The Religious sect, or those often referred to as homophobic, contend homosexuality is a behavioral choice not unlike any other choice we encounter daily.  There are even camps, usually religious in origin, devoted to “curing” homosexuals and are designed to cleanse them of their wicked ways.

My completely unscientific opinion is that homosexuality is not unlike my preference for blue over red.  It’s just something that is a part of me that I cannot explain, much like a woman’s preference for other women is a part of her.  I think if homosexuality were strictly a biological matter then those that are biologically exact copies of one another would share the same sexual preference.  I am speaking of course of identical twins and while there are cases where twins both are homosexual, there are also instances where one is and one isn’t.  For the ones that are not the same in their sexual preference one could always make the argument that the twin identifying him or herself as heterosexual is living in denial, but there is no way of proving that.

In the end, we like what we like.  I could start telling people I have a new favorite color, I could even get rid of everything blue I own, but why should I?  Just the same, why should someone who is attracted to the same sex only date people of the opposite sex?  It seems silly to me for someone in that position to do something that doesn’t appeal to them.  Now I know the conservative sect argues why stop there?  Why not love a dog if that’s your preference, or children?  My response is that we are logical, rationale beings gifted with such mental capabilities that allow us to create boundaries.  I also do not see the reason to defend homosexuality by pointing out its differences from pedophilia, they should be obvious.

In conclusion, I see no reason why there is such hostility by some people towards homosexuals.  I personally may not be able to understand why a man would prefer another man to a woman, but I also don’t know why someone would prefer yellow to blue.  I do know that I have nothing against the individual who prefers the color yellow, and that’s how it should be.