A listing on Etsy provides the opportunity for anyone to sit on a sofa-shaped portrait of Stephen Colbert.
IKEA makes it simple to customize their couches, but I’ll wager the Swedish home furnishings retailer won’t design a couch this specific. It fell to an artist on the online marketplace Etsy to take this IKEA Kipplan couch and transform it into a tribute to the television personality Stephen Colbert. The canvas piece is painted with acrylic paint and bears a larger-than-life portrait of the Colbert Report host.
Seller Matt Charlan has created a unique pricing structure for this piece, noting, “the price of the couch is automatically calculated using a sophisticated algorithm like Goldman used to inflate its assets… The price is directly proportional to the number of people who look at this listing. So come back and see the price go up.” Fans of the comedian, referred to as the Colbert Nation, are active and engaged, often providing an increase in popularity (the “Colbert Bump”) to guests who appear on his show. If the Nation hears about this sofa, I can imagine that price shooting through the roof. As of this writing, the price is at US $2,008.87, with 7,147 views.
You can visit seller Charlan’s store here, but the couch is the only thing he’s selling. Coupled with the pricing setup, which seems designed to go viral, this feels like it could be a hoax, and according to Etsy’s terms of use, the site “has no control over the quality, safety, morality or legality of any aspect of the items listed, the truth or accuracy of the listings,” and “cannot ensure that a buyer or seller will actually complete a transaction.” I’m going to have faith in the Colbert couch, though, and the air of truthiness it would add to an afternoon nap.
Source: Etsy, via Entertainment Weekly
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Published: Jan 12, 2011 09:35 pm