Where Art meets Commerce

or, second-rate idea does well in world gone mad.

I was checking the news the other day, when I came across this story:

The Million-Dollar Student

To summarise, Alex Tew, a 21 year-old about to start university, has earnt over a million dollars in five months selling the million pixels of his homepage for a dollar each.

After the pangs of envy died down, after wistfully comparing the fruits of my labours in bed next to this young entrepreneur's, after getting a headache checking out the page in question, I started to think about how this could've happened and what it means to the world today.

To give credit where credit's due, it was a brilliant idea in its way. A riff on the age-old dream of making a quick-buck so that you no-longer have to go through the day-to-day drudgery of working for a living. Who wouldn't want a million pounds? Even if you'd become enlightened and were no longer concerned with material matters, you'd still like the money to help spread whatever message you thought worthy. No? And the beauty of the idea was that everyone's desire to find-out how someone can make a million bucks so quickly became the engine which drove its success. A kind of paradox for our times.

But. What has actually been achieved here? Some wealth has been redistributed from hundreds of companies and individuals into Alex's hands. Have these groups profited from the exchange? That's debatable. If you look at the page you might notice a few names, but most won't even be noticed. Perhaps with enough hits, statistics comes into play and every logo will get some attention. Really, apart from Alex and a few companies, aside from the little pleasure that comes from seeing somebody strike-it-rich, nobody else has gained.

The next time another millionaire is made, I'd like to read about how his or her million has made us all richer.