5 Weird Things I Learned Selling My Used Panties on Reddit
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_21818_5-things-i-learned-selling-my-used-panties-internet.html#ixzz3GXPxlV1f
Nestled in a cozy grey area between "pornography" and
"prostitution" is one of the Internet's strangest cottage industries:
selling dirty underpants online. It's the new media answer to a fetish
that's existed since the invention of panties -- some men enjoy sniffing
spoiled thongs, and the Internet has given them a way to indulge their
fetish without stealing any hampers.
It's also given a small, creative, and very open-minded cadre of women an opportunity to make a decent living while significantly reducing their laundry bill. This raised many, many questions in our minds, so Cracked sat down with one of these women and asked her to walk us through the business of selling one's underwear online.
It was not a difficult decision.
Luckily, none of the buyers I've sold to have ever set off any "terrifying stalker" alarms in my head. For most of these guys, the anonymity is a big part of what's exciting. They want to get off on random women's underwear, not get our phone numbers and friend us on Facebook.
I'm not a Victoria's Secret model, either -- human sexuality is a galaxy of different fetishes, and there's no age or body type that doesn't have a thriving Internet community dedicated to worshiping it. There's even a demand from women for dirty men's underpants, and you'd be surprised how many fetishes there are within the underwear-selling market. Whether your erotic poison is a pregnant woman's bloomers or the tattered old high school boxer shorts of some musclebound Danish dude, you can find it somewhere on the Internet.
But here's where things start to get kind of gross ...
Notice how polite and, dare I say, professional that whole exchange
was? Selling muddy underpants is an honest business. Neither of us was
in a position to offer any judgment on the other, and I'm competing in a
service industry here. Friendliness pays.
I'm sure that there are a few ways a seller could cheat when putting an order together (like spitting in your underwear to make them extra, uh, crusty), but it isn't worth the risk of getting a bad review. If word gets out on Reddit that your product is anything less than genuine, you could get banned. If someone wants me to pay me to wear panties for 48 hours straight, I wear those sons of bitches for 48 hours straight.
It's also given a small, creative, and very open-minded cadre of women an opportunity to make a decent living while significantly reducing their laundry bill. This raised many, many questions in our minds, so Cracked sat down with one of these women and asked her to walk us through the business of selling one's underwear online.
#5. There is an eBay for Dirty Panties
Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
I first decided to start selling when my heating bill shot up an
extra 150 bucks over the winter. I'm good with budgeting, but even split
with two other roommates, I knew that extra expense every month was
going to start cutting into my groceries. I work a minimum wage job with
as many hours as I can get, but you can't squeeze blood from a stone.
You can, apparently, squeeze money out of your dirty underpants.
lofilolo/iStock/Getty Images
Cotton gold. Texas T-Backs.
Like most stories involving the exchange of used undergarments for
cash, it started on the Internet. I was browsing Reddit one day and came
across a subreddit called "/r/pantyselling." I figured that as long as I
could do it anonymously, what would it hurt to try? I took two or three
photos and made a $75 sale in one hour. That's more money than I'd make
working an entire shift at my day job. I suddenly found myself at a
crossroads, where my options were "eliminate what little remains of my
free time and double the stress in my life" or "mail my panties to
strangers on the Internet when I was done wearing them."Cotton gold. Texas T-Backs.
It was not a difficult decision.
Jupiterimages/Polka Dot/Getty Images
"Can I list Victoria's Secret as a business expense?"
I found the whole process to be surprisingly straightforward -- I get
paid upfront by an interested party, usually via a Visa/Amazon gift
card, and once I receive the payment and the customer's address, I drop
my vacuum-packed underthings in the mail and send the buyer a tracking
number. After they receive their purchase, they can post onto the forum
with a review of my dirty laundry, and I can review the buyer. The whole
system is so smooth that it's easy to forget this trade revolves
entirely around people paying top dollar for crotch stains."Can I list Victoria's Secret as a business expense?"
Hill Street Studios/Blend Images/Getty Images
"A++, would buy again! Shipped in time for Grandpa's birthday."
Now, selling your dirty underwear to random people on the Internet
does have its risks (it's kinda-sorta sex work, if you're flexible with
the definition). There's always the chance of running into creepy
clients who get obsessed with you and try to take things a step too far.
I take as many precautions as I can -- I have specific Reddit and
PayPal accounts that I only use for selling panties, and I never put a
return address on the packages I send out. If I used Craigslist and met
my clients in person, who knows, maybe I'd be hidden inside several old
freezers by now."A++, would buy again! Shipped in time for Grandpa's birthday."
Luckily, none of the buyers I've sold to have ever set off any "terrifying stalker" alarms in my head. For most of these guys, the anonymity is a big part of what's exciting. They want to get off on random women's underwear, not get our phone numbers and friend us on Facebook.
#4. It's an International, Underground Industry
KatarzynaBialasiewicz/iStock/Getty Images
Hawking your dirty booty-slings isn't limited to obscure corners of
Reddit. You've probably heard that Japan used to have vending machines
that sold pre-worn panties. Nowadays, the Japanese government makes
commercials to discourage that trade. Not because it's creepy, mind you,
but because a man might've worn those panties:Japanese Panties https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_X89CbcY2Y
But an aspiring panty vendor can find unnervingly exhaustive guides online at the aptly-named "sellpantiesformoney.com":
sellpantiesformoney.com
"Underwear Vs. Overshare: Keeping An Air Of Mystery For Your Buyers"
Additionally, you can hop on websites like "pantydeal.com" or "myusedpantystore.com":"Underwear Vs. Overshare: Keeping An Air Of Mystery For Your Buyers"
pantydeal.com
myusedpantystore.com
So, yeah, it's kind of a used panty gold rush. I'm a student and work
a regular 9-5 job in the summer, and I work as much as I can during the
school year, but nothing compares to the money I've made auctioning off
my laundry pile. I can make between 35-75 bucks a pair, and I don't
even have to leave my apartment.I'm not a Victoria's Secret model, either -- human sexuality is a galaxy of different fetishes, and there's no age or body type that doesn't have a thriving Internet community dedicated to worshiping it. There's even a demand from women for dirty men's underpants, and you'd be surprised how many fetishes there are within the underwear-selling market. Whether your erotic poison is a pregnant woman's bloomers or the tattered old high school boxer shorts of some musclebound Danish dude, you can find it somewhere on the Internet.
But here's where things start to get kind of gross ...
#3. You Do More Than Just Wear Them
Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images
The selling process works in a couple of different ways. When I first
started, I posted a few pictures of a certain pair of panties onto the
forum, and then got an influx of private messages from interested
buyers. While I sold that pair specifically as is, I started to develop
ongoing buyers who would make requests such as length of time worn,
activities done in them (going to the gym, having sex, peeing or leaving
skid marks, etc.), and the type and color of underwear. A few even buy
in bulk, because sometimes you need to treat your masturbation supply
shopping like a trip to Costco.I'm sure that there are a few ways a seller could cheat when putting an order together (like spitting in your underwear to make them extra, uh, crusty), but it isn't worth the risk of getting a bad review. If word gets out on Reddit that your product is anything less than genuine, you could get banned. If someone wants me to pay me to wear panties for 48 hours straight, I wear those sons of bitches for 48 hours straight.
Douglas Adams/iStock/Getty Images
"I can assure you all my stock is free range. Nothing cruelly kept cooped up in a drawer."
So who in the hell is buying this stuff? Well ..."I can assure you all my stock is free range. Nothing cruelly kept cooped up in a drawer."
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_21818_5-things-i-learned-selling-my-used-panties-internet.html#ixzz3GXPskZIB
#2. The Customers Are Surprisingly Not-Creepy
Artem Grishko/iStock/Getty Images
It turned out that most of the guys out there buying used underpants
are quite sweet, and seem relatively normal (with the obvious quirk of
loving the smell of musty crotch). The messages I get are generally
short and professional.Sure, there is the occasional guy who just wants to talk dirty to me and doesn't really want to buy anything, but I do most of my business on Reddit, so if a guy isn't following the rules or gains a bad reputation with the sellers, we can talk to the moderators and have that person banned for being scummy. I've only ever turned down two requests: one guy asked to see my full face, which for the sake of privacy I will not do, and another guy wanted a pair of panties that a man had ejaculated in "at least ten times," with a picture documenting each, um, round. My boyfriend doesn't mind my side business, but he had absolutely no interest in helping me fill that order.
Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"Whenever I've offered to give you a hand, I didn't mean this."
There's a certain amount of trust that goes into a transaction like
this. I usually take payment in the form of Visa/Amazon gift cards, so
my end is fairly safe, but I have the addresses of guys with undie
fetishes from here to Greece, and the men want to stay as anonymous as I
do. Just like the buyers, a seller has to be verified by the
moderators, and can be banned for misusing that information. But there's
still an enormous amount of good faith involved in giving a strange
woman your home address and the electronic equivalent of cash in
exchange for a used pair of her underwear. If you can't trust the girl
charging you $45 for a pair of striped pink panties she ran six miles
in, who can you trust?"Whenever I've offered to give you a hand, I didn't mean this."
IPGGutenbergUKLtd/iStock/Getty Images
"Hanes Her Way? No, these Hanes are your way, sir!"
Yes, I'm basically letting anonymous fetishists pay my student loans.
I'm not exactly proud of it, but I'm certainly not ashamed. The way I
see it, it isn't any more exploitative than having to work at Taco Bell
until 4 a.m. every night to put myself through college. But being part
of this big market of panty-slingers means you've got to work extra hard
to find the customers who want to buy your particular "brand" of dirty
underwear. And that means ..."Hanes Her Way? No, these Hanes are your way, sir!"
#1. You Have to Market Your Junk
bevangoldswain/iStock/Getty Images
It feels weird knowing that people want to own your panties, and want
the pictures to prove that they are yours, specifically, but that's the
thing -- you have to know what unique quality you possess that's going
to trigger someone's fetish, and then advertise the shit out of that.
Even if it involves literal shit.You really do have to get good at knowing your own body, and what types of lighting and angles are the most flattering. Many times, to make a sale, I also have to include pictures that I didn't post to Reddit. I keep my face out of the shot, of course, but it's still not easy having to make amateur porn for strangers that they may or may not keep forever on their computers as the necessary precursor to getting my paycheck. But again, it's still better than Taco Bell.
Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
I can't imagine the lighting and angling that went into making that presentable.
The nice thing about this, uh, business is that you build up a stable
of dedicated clients rather quickly. I've only actually posted nine or
ten pairs online -- the majority of my buyers now are people I've dealt
with before who message me privately when they want to place a new
order. It's weird to have that kind of "relationship," where you
maintain regular contact with a person just because they like to
masturbate with your used underwear, but in a way, it's less personal
than porn acting. Your face and name aren't necessary. Only your sweat
and other unmentionable personal stains matter.I can't imagine the lighting and angling that went into making that presentable.
After a while, you start to notice bizarre trends (beyond the obvious "people will pay money for a pair of used panties"). For example, there's a lucrative market for the middle-and-high-school underwear of adult women. My first thong, which I bought in the 7th grade, went for $100. There are a lot of terrifying implications in play here, not the least of which is the fact that me selling my old middle school underpants might have prevented a crime.
Leah-Anne Thompson/iStock/Getty Images, JoKMedia/E+/Getty Images
You want to know what it takes to sell underwear? It takes brass ovaries to sell underwear.
By far, the most sales I've made have been to guys in Boston. I'm not
sure if that's merely a coincidence of my own experience or if there is
a panty fetish epidemic on the East Coast, but I probably get four or
five requests a week from eager Bostonians looking to score some female
understains.You want to know what it takes to sell underwear? It takes brass ovaries to sell underwear.
Christmas-themed underwear with little bells on them sold pretty well for me this past year. They were a little embarrassing to wear, though -- I would jingle with every step I took, like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Fulfilling that sort of request feels weird at first, and then one day someone asks, "Do you do pairs with skid marks?" and you find yourself saying "Sure do :)" without feeling even a little bit weird. "Heavy skid marks?" Of course, I'm a goddamn professional here. I get a lot of requests for period and skid mark panties (I guess some men really enjoy the idea of a girl with the personal hygiene of a shop towel):
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_21818_5-things-i-learned-selling-my-used-panties-internet_p2.html#ixzz3GXPWVZdq
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