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Matters of Perspective
Posted
December 16th, 2007 @ 11:30 PM EST
A funny thing happened today and I never saw it coming.
Now, as some of you may or may not know, for the past five years, I've
been the webmaster of a not-too-shabby but still kinda modest help site
for people who play on Neopets.com. Since the beginning, my primary
motivation has been to provide a site for people who need help navigating
the sometimes confusing and turbulent world of Neopia. While it's always
nice to get those extra little incentives for referring new users to
Neopets, I've always been most inspired by those random "Neomails" I get
from time to time from visitors, young and old, who really appreciate the
time and effort I put into my site. All in all, working on that site was
probably the first and most self-less thing I had ever done, because, in
time, nothing motivated me more to keep it going than the smiles I knew I
was putting on hundreds of unknown peoples' faces. Not money, not
Neopoints, nothing.
Since starting the site, I've encountered dozens of situations where I was
forced to choose between doing something easy and selfish, or putting in
some extra effort in order to do something nice for someone else. Nine
times out of ten, I like to think that I do the nice thing, but even I
have my off days. Either way, I do my best, and every now and then it
dawns on me just how meaningful such a thing might be to someone, even
when you don't expect it to be.
So, as far as I could tell, this past week was no different than any
other. I spent an obscene amount of my time on Neopets and my USS Frontier
site, I worked when I needed to, and I endured a few friendly jabs from my
friends and family because I'm a 22-year-old college grad with one Star
Trek site and one site for a kid's website. My standard response is always
something along the lines of, "Hey, I know it may seem lame to you, but
somewhere out there, there are hundreds of people who really appreciate
what I do and count on me to keep my sites updated." Then we usually share
a laugh and the matter disappears until the next day when I choose one of
the sites over one of my other daily chores.
Then, several days ago, when I was trying to sell one of my virtual items
for a reasonable amount of the site's currency ("Neopoints"), I was
contacted by a rather affluent user who had enough Neopoints to make even
my head spin. To my surprise, she offered me 150,000 NP for an item worth
at least twice that amount. Now, ordinarily, this would be no big deal.
After all, as they say, the rich don't stay rich by wasting their money.
However, this particular user also happens to be the only one with the
monopoly on that item and every one like it, and as a result, she has been
selling said items for up to four times what she paid for them.
To me, this seemed a little bit greedy. After all, everyone who finds
those items gets them for free, and then they sell them to people for a
nice profit that many users can afford, and everyone's happy. But not this
user... she just liked to bully others into selling their items so that
she could make a huge profit. To me, that was enfuriating.
So... I decided to go into the business of selling those items, paying
generously for them and charging only a modest fee for selling them as
complete sets. People buying and selling were happy, and many were
thrilled that someone was finally taking a stand against the monopoly and
the incredibly rude person behind it. I even made some new friends, one of
whom was especially eager to help me in my quest. Though I didn't know
much about him, he seemed nice enough and I agreed to compensate him well
whenever he sold me one of the items he had acquired for my sets.
And so we set to work... for several days, we worked hard to collect these
items and sell them as sets, all the while making sure to spread the word
about what we were doing so nobody else would be overcharged (unless they
could afford it). Many people were thrilled, a few not so much, but all in
all, to me, it was another example of me putting in a little (or in this
case, a LOT of) extra effort for the benefit of others. Things were going
well...
Today, one of the items in the set suddenly skyrocketed in price because a
new user decided to buy several of them and double their price. Again,
ordinarily, this would be no big deal, but it just so happened that my new
friend was auctioning one of those items. His asking price was lower than
what the average was, and even though somebody made a high offer on it, I
thought, "Ehh, what the heck," and I bid a little more. Then, to both of
our surprise, somebody else bid more... then the monopoly holder bid
more... then somebody else bid more... this continued until finally the
monopoly holder was offering three times the item's actual worth.
Then something incredible happened, and I don't mean good incredible... I
mean incredible in the sense that I am utterly amazed that someone would
do this. The girl that has the monopoly on those items actually sent an
angry message to my friend, blaming HIM for the high price of the item. He
immediately told me, and I told him not to worry about it because the
monopoly girl was just some random rude chick somewhere. Unfortunately, he
did worry about it... it really bothered him. He couldn't understand why
somebody was being so mean to him because of something he had no control
over, and what's worse, he began to cry because Neopets was his only
outlet for enjoyment. That's when I learned my new friend was a very sick
child who had spent the past six months in a hospital in Canada...
I was in shock. I still am. Never has the reality of things hit me so
profoundly. Granted, I've seen and heard about some pretty terrible
things, but for this to happen on a virtual pet site for children right
before Christmas...
After taking some time to think, I messaged my friend back and tried to
console him, but it was hard to find the words to make him feel better
given that his only source of happiness had suddenly turned against him. I
did my best, but God only knows if it made a difference.
Sometimes we forget about how our actions and words can and do impact
others. Sometimes we're so caught up in our own lives that we forget how
much the things we do or say cab effect the lives of those around us.
As Christmas draws closer and especially once it's passed, I sincerely
hope that we can all keep those things in mind when we're with our
friends, family, and loved ones, or even when the opportunity arises to
help someone in need. Let us all learn a lesson from my friend in the
hospital and the random girl somewhere who just made his Christmas a
little bit less merry...
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Things to Come
09/16/2007
It's All About Appearances
08/16/2007
Checovision Realized
08/07/2007
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