Virginity Auctioning

2004internet trenddeclining

Virginity Auctioning is the online practice of listing one's claimed virginity for sale to the highest bidder, with the winning bidder promised sexual intercourse. The trend generated a decade of tabloid news cycles from 2004 through 2014, driven by dozens of high-profile listings on eBay, dating sites and escort agency pages, most of which ended in withdrawals, bans or publicity stunts.

virginity auctioning memeshoax memesmoral panic memesscandal memeslate 2000s memes

Overview

Virginity Auctioning is the online practice of putting one's claimed virginity up for sale to the highest bidder, with the winning bidder promised sexual intercourse and listings appearing on eBay, Gumtree, dating sites, dedicated escort agency pages and even the Russian trading site 24au.ru through the late 2000s and early 2010s5.

The listings followed a similar arc across countries. Sellers were often young women, sometimes teenagers, who posted photos alongside a gynecologist's certificate and named a specific financial goal, such as university tuition or a family medical bill, before either withdrawing the offer, getting kicked off the host site or completing the deal privately1. Media attention drove most of the bids, and outlets like the Daily Mail turned individual sellers into repeat international news cycles that ran for months at a time4.

How It Spread

In September 2008, days after Sacramento State graduate Natalie Dylan pitched her own auction on The Howard Stern Show through the Nevada brothel Moonlite BunnyRanch, 20-year-old Italian showgirl Raffaella Fico told the weekly Chi she wanted one million euros for her first time and would put the cash toward an apartment in Rome and an acting course. She later admitted the whole offer was a scandal-driven publicity move (translated from Italian)3.

Romanian teenager Alina Percea took the pattern in a more concrete direction in March 2009. The 18-year-old, from Caracal in Olt county, posted an ad on a German-language dating site asking £50,000 for her virginity so she could pay for a computing degree, with the listing insisting on a gentle, respectful and generous winner and offering unprotected sex only if the buyer proved disease-free1. The auction closed at £8,800 (10,000 euros) to a 45-year-old businessman from Bologna, who flew Percea to Venice, paid for a luxury hotel and toured the sights with her before the two spent the night together; she told Closer magazine "I liked the man and got on with him well" and that the winning bid had appeared in the last moments of a two-week race that had started at 90p2.

The format kept turning up. In May 2011 the Daily Mail identified a 21-year-old Belgian student named Noelle who had accepted around £45,000 through the Amsterdam-based Yantra escort agency, with the buyer required to take her shopping, out to dinner and to accept a doctor's certificate confirming her virginity plus a mandatory condom clause4. The Yantra spokeswoman told Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws that Noelle had "one sole objective, and that's cash", and the agency promised five percent of the earnings to charity to prove she was not a sex worker4. Australian filmmaker Justin Sisely then turned the format itself into a documentary called Virgins Wanted in October 2012, whose parallel auctions closed at $780,000 for Brazilian Catarina Migliorini and $2,600 for Russian Alexander Stepanov before Migliorini pulled out and accused Sisely of fraud5.

How to Use This Meme

The listings typically followed a common template. Sellers posed for glamour-style photos on a dating site, escort agency page or general auction platform, attached a gynecologist's certificate confirming virginity, set a starting bid in the low four figures and named a specific financial reason, most often university tuition, a family medical bill or debt1. Buyers were usually required to prove identity or wealth before the winning offer was accepted, and some sellers reserved a right of refusal or an unusual add-on such as dinner and a shopping trip written into the deal4. Actually going through with the sale was optional and rare; the majority of publicized auctions ended with a withdrawal, a platform ban or a media-driven cancellation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Virginity Auctioning

2004internet trenddeclining

Virginity Auctioning is the online practice of listing one's claimed virginity for sale to the highest bidder, with the winning bidder promised sexual intercourse. The trend generated a decade of tabloid news cycles from 2004 through 2014, driven by dozens of high-profile listings on eBay, dating sites and escort agency pages, most of which ended in withdrawals, bans or publicity stunts.

virginity auctioning memes hoax memes moral panic memes scandal memes late 2000s memes

Overview

Virginity Auctioning is the online practice of putting one's claimed virginity up for sale to the highest bidder, with the winning bidder promised sexual intercourse and listings appearing on eBay, Gumtree, dating sites, dedicated escort agency pages and even the Russian trading site 24au.ru through the late 2000s and early 2010s5.

The listings followed a similar arc across countries. Sellers were often young women, sometimes teenagers, who posted photos alongside a gynecologist's certificate and named a specific financial goal, such as university tuition or a family medical bill, before either withdrawing the offer, getting kicked off the host site or completing the deal privately1. Media attention drove most of the bids, and outlets like the Daily Mail turned individual sellers into repeat international news cycles that ran for months at a time4.

How It Spread

In September 2008, days after Sacramento State graduate Natalie Dylan pitched her own auction on The Howard Stern Show through the Nevada brothel Moonlite BunnyRanch, 20-year-old Italian showgirl Raffaella Fico told the weekly Chi she wanted one million euros for her first time and would put the cash toward an apartment in Rome and an acting course. She later admitted the whole offer was a scandal-driven publicity move (translated from Italian)3.

Romanian teenager Alina Percea took the pattern in a more concrete direction in March 2009. The 18-year-old, from Caracal in Olt county, posted an ad on a German-language dating site asking £50,000 for her virginity so she could pay for a computing degree, with the listing insisting on a gentle, respectful and generous winner and offering unprotected sex only if the buyer proved disease-free1. The auction closed at £8,800 (10,000 euros) to a 45-year-old businessman from Bologna, who flew Percea to Venice, paid for a luxury hotel and toured the sights with her before the two spent the night together; she told Closer magazine "I liked the man and got on with him well" and that the winning bid had appeared in the last moments of a two-week race that had started at 90p2.

The format kept turning up. In May 2011 the Daily Mail identified a 21-year-old Belgian student named Noelle who had accepted around £45,000 through the Amsterdam-based Yantra escort agency, with the buyer required to take her shopping, out to dinner and to accept a doctor's certificate confirming her virginity plus a mandatory condom clause4. The Yantra spokeswoman told Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws that Noelle had "one sole objective, and that's cash", and the agency promised five percent of the earnings to charity to prove she was not a sex worker4. Australian filmmaker Justin Sisely then turned the format itself into a documentary called Virgins Wanted in October 2012, whose parallel auctions closed at $780,000 for Brazilian Catarina Migliorini and $2,600 for Russian Alexander Stepanov before Migliorini pulled out and accused Sisely of fraud5.

How to Use This Meme

The listings typically followed a common template. Sellers posed for glamour-style photos on a dating site, escort agency page or general auction platform, attached a gynecologist's certificate confirming virginity, set a starting bid in the low four figures and named a specific financial reason, most often university tuition, a family medical bill or debt1. Buyers were usually required to prove identity or wealth before the winning offer was accepted, and some sellers reserved a right of refusal or an unusual add-on such as dinner and a shopping trip written into the deal4. Actually going through with the sale was optional and rare; the majority of publicized auctions ended with a withdrawal, a platform ban or a media-driven cancellation.

Frequently Asked Questions