User:Lyman the tank engine/sandbox

The Significant Objects Project is a literary and anthropological experiment devised by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, demonstrating that the effect of narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively.

The project auctioned off thrift-store objects via |ebay eBay; for item descriptions, short stories purpose-written by over 200 contributing writers, including Meg Cabot, William Gibson, Ben Greenman, Sheila Heti, Neil LaBute, Jonathan Lethem, Tom McCarthy, Lydia Millet, Jenny Offill, Bruce Sterling, Scarlett Thomas, and Colson Whitehead, were substituted. The objects, purchased for $1.25 apiece on average, sold for nearly $8,000.00 in total. (Proceeds were distributed to the contributors, and to nonprofit creative writing organizations.) All the project’s stories are archived on it's |this site.