“I don’t know,” said the teenager in a phone interview. “It just didn’t seem right that this guy was reduced to selling his life.”
Stone, a graphic designer and a member of the Oregon state legislature, was diagnosed with a high-grade glioblastoma multiforme, a usually fatal brain tumor. He claimed to have less than six months to live, and he was selling his life on eBay to the highest bidder.
Huck, a senior at the Florence Nightingale School for Young Women, turned to her friends in cyberspace to raise money to bid on Stone’s listing. An avid participant of role-playing games like World of Warcraft and Dark Age of Camelot, Huck invited her cyber friends to join her on a quest. Her goal was to win the auction, and to allow Stone to die with his family and his dignity intact.
“It was amazing how fast people responded,” the modest girl said. “We all sort of got Jared fever.”
Using her World of Warcraft character, a level sixty-five druid called Guinevere the Glad, Huck created a viral campaign inside the fantasy world.
“It just took off. Everyone thought it was so cool that we could do something tangible together. You know, instead of just role playing.”
Unfortunately for Huck, her efforts, impressive though they were, would fall short. Mr. Stone’s reserve—the minimum bid needed to win the auction—was $1 million, $700,000 more than the cyber group was able to raise. And a week later, the auction was delisted for violating eBay terms of use.
“It’s sad that we didn’t get to help,” Huck said, “but I’m glad we tried, and glad we came together.”
Someone had scrawled “Your father’s a freak!” across the top in red marker. Jackie took the clipping down and put it in her bag, taking care not to rip it. She thought for a minute about finding somewhere to hide from her classmates for the rest of the day, but she just didn’t have the energy. Jackie slumped her shoulders and shuffled off to biology. The thought of dissecting a frog, once revolting, no longer seemed so bad.
***
Life and Death was scheduled to run from nine to ten p.m., seven nights a week for as long as Jared was alive. Each episode would feature an edited collage of scenes from the Stone household, shot during the previous twenty-four hours, mixed with interviews with Jared and his family. Ethan’s plan was to use the first few episodes to get viewers comfortable with the show’s premise, then introduce viewer interactivity along with celebrity drop-ins.
The pitch to potential advertisers was simple: If the television network gave people permission to watch another person die, they would tune in, in droves. It wasn’t a hard sell. Car companies, laundry detergents, feature films, and fast-food establishments all bought time, and all created custom spots to run during the program. Each one tried to out-condole the other, with the coup de grace being a McDonald’s ad that ran thirty seconds of icy blackness with small gray McDonald’s arches in the bottom corner. In the last ten seconds, off-white letters fade in, telling the audience that “No matter what, we all have to eat. McDonald’s, the official meal of Life and Death.”
The premiere episode ran on a Thursday night, and the Nielsen numbers were through the roof. Nearly 80 million households watched the opening scene of Jared and Deirdre sitting on their front porch, looking happy, healthy, and normal. It was an edited interview conducted by an unseen producer as they answered unheard questions. The cut from answer to answer was intentionally rough, jarring the viewer ever so slightly. Deirdre did most of the talking.
Deirdre: We’ve been married for twenty years.
Jared: We met in college [jump cut] NYU.
Deirdre: It was a physics lab. We were both fulfilling a science requirement, and we both hated it.
Jared: We skipped one day and went for coffee. We’ve been together ever since.
Deirdre: I’m originally from here [jump cut] Portland. So we settled here. We wanted to be near my mom. It was great when the girls were young. They got to know their grandmother well, before she passed away. [jump cut] Cancer of the bile duct.
Jared: We have two kids. Jackie is fifteen, and Megan is thirteen.
The camera zoomed in and froze on Jared’s face, the pain and confusion in his eyes unmistakable.
Jared: Or at least I think that’s how old they are.
The title credits ran, and the show was off and running.
***