Bidding for Information

In the last year, Yahoo! Japan added a category called "JOHO" (information) to their Yahoo! Auctions. Currently, around 5,000 items are auctioned in this category. Most of the prices of them are around 1 ~ 10,000yen but sometimes it's up to 200,000yen (1,890USD). So, what kind of auction is it?

To sum up, almost of these "information" are usual spams. Once when I was looking for some liquid crystal TV in the auction, I found a strange titled item. It said, "You can buy an expensive TV set or anything you want!". I read its description.

I am an ordinary company worker. But I'm slightly different from you. I know how to get my additional income much more than my actual salary. Are you satisfied with your earnings? Don't you want more? If you don't, please leave away. About one year ago, I've found an information about a way to be rich in this auction. Although it was not effective to me, after many trial and error, I've completed my own know-how to earn 1,000,000yen (9,500USD) per month. This is that I would like to let you know...

And long, boring, and pointless propaganda followed after this. This seller seemed to be waiting for some greedy idiot trapped by his honeyed words and pays money out. Since this kind of spams had been spread among the entire auctions, Yahoo made that "information" category to isolate them. These information are sometimes about an useless method of winning slot machine jackpots, or some of them lead their bidders to their multi-level marketing scheme. But, their descriptions are all childish and everyone can find out that they are obvious fabrications. The other item says like this:

I happened on an awesome thing. Don't you think it's wonderful if you can get an information from future? For a long time I had searched for valuable information from others but they are all similar and worthless. Most important point for the information business is a freshness. You can get information from future without charge, and without limitation. Can you believe it?

And another alchemist says:

What do you think if you have a PC which automatically earns 10,000 yen every day? What do you think if your PC earns money instead of you even when you are sleeping? I'm sure you need it. Let's change your own PC into like that!

Then, what will be happened if you bid one of them and pay your money for it? Mostly, a simple email will be sent to you. It is very thing that they call "valuable information". Some victims are showing the contents of the emails which they bought and found that they were frauds.

In our internet business, we can hardly see the faces of our customers. But the important business bases are the same whether it is online or offline. We have to always think about "what we should do to make our customers happy".

It continues this kind of "golden rules for business" which has been already said for the past thousand years. And it ends like this.

Are you thinking that this instruction isn't worthy of its high price? I don't think so. Because you can sell this text to others and earn much more than you paid for this!

...This is why the auctions always look crowded. Can you think of something unproductive than this?

Japanese people like a shortcut. They are always thinking about how they can get max profit with minimum action (or without any action).
You can find that every Japanese bookstore is filled with many "how-to" books, which tell us how to be rich, how to be loved by others, how to become a celebrities, or how to be thought as an intelligent person even if we are actually far from it. The good sales of these books show that people believe these books make them to be what they want to be without any experiences.
On the other hand, people prefer to make efforts to find a way to do something with no efforts. Even if their result of thought brings them only small profit, they seem to be satisfied because they (seemingly) have not spent their time and energy.

So, why did they choose the internet auction? The information sellers must be thinking that the internet is still believed as a gold mine by people. But such dreamers are already only themselves. Becoming rich by only sitting in front of PC may be their heartfelt and sad dream.

Let's go back to the auction. This description of an auction item is the most I like:

This is an indictment! I really got angry! The information which *****(someone's yahoo ID) is listing on auction is a complete lie! I bought it and followed its instruction but I've got no effect at all. I emailed him to ask about it but he has not replied. It must be a resale of someone else's information. His seller's rating is also doubtful. Don't be cheated by him!
So, I fixed its insruction to work better. I'm sure that you will be rich with mine. Please bid this item!