These days, many new alleged disorders, health scares, and other psychological ailments seem to have been largely aided and abetted in their spread around the world by the Internet’s current viral culture. People will tell you that what you eat is killing you, what you breathe is killing you, and even Wi-Fi and drinking water will damage you forever.

Looking to take advantage of people’s fears, hucksters have used these scares to dramatize made-up disorders. Sometimes, they even create health scams themselves to sell products and make money off the gullible general public.

10 Some People Falsely Believe That Wi-Fi Is Dangerous Or That They Have A Specific Intolerance

A growing number of people claim to have electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). These individuals believe that the radiation and other radio waves from Wi-Fi and mobile phones are causing them to be sick on a regular basis. Some have even petitioned governments to give them disability for it.

In France and Sweden, a few people have managed to get benefits for this fictitious disorder. The problem is that many of these people are being falsely legitimized because a couple of countries are confused by reports from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO verified that EHS was real. But they also said that the electromagnetic part should be removed^[1] because there isn’t a shred of evidence that Wi-Fi or other similar signals are actually causing any kind of specific disorder or symptoms. In fact, the people who constantly claim to have this disorder always have symptoms that are very common—such as headaches, nausea, or a feeling of being unwell—and can be attributed to almost anything.

On top of that, studies have shown that EHS is likely to be an example of the “nocebo effect.” This occurs when someone comes to believe that something is dangerous for him. Before long, he will convince himself that it is making him sick. Then his body reacts in the opposite way it would to a placebo and sickens him for real.

While the jury is still out on whether there are any long-term repercussions from constantly talking on a mobile phone, most researchers believe that any effects are slight and that your Wi-Fi itself is not something to seriously worry about.

9 Gluten Sensitivity Is Probably The Most Overhyped ‘Disease’ Ever

It has become incredibly trendy these days to take gluten out of your diet entirely, citing claims that it somehow makes you feel sick, tired, or weak without any actual evidence to back it up. Many of these individuals don’t bother to go to a doctor to see if they actually have celiac disease or a wheat allergy. Still, some claim to have a sensitivity even though there is no way to actually test for such a thing.

Lately, some news sites have declared that research has proved the existence of gluten intolerance, but it did no such thing. Research has shown that some people who don’t test positive for a wheat allergy or celiac disease still claim to have some symptoms when eating gluten. But there are a lot of factors going on.

To begin with, our old friend the nocebo effect returns. Many people have been persuaded that gluten is bad for everyone, despite this being entirely untrue. So they psychologically convince their bodies that gluten is bad and make themselves sick.

Doctors have also suspected that irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) may have a lot to do with this. Researchers performed a double-blind study with IBS sufferers who were supposedly gluten intolerant and found that gluten was not a reliable trigger any more than a placebo.

The researchers believe that wheat and a lot of different foods can be tough on the tummies of people with IBS. These patients are just sensitive to almost everything, but gluten itself is a protein and not the culprit here.

If you think you have issues with gluten, doctors recommend that you go for an official diagnosis first. There could be many non-gluten things causing your symptoms, and you could delay a proper diagnosis by thinking you have solved the issue on your own.^[2]

The truth is that a lot of people who claim that they have a sensitivity to gluten probably just have sensitive stomachs in general.

8 Your Body Does Not Need Its ‘Energies’ To Be Balanced

These days, many people talk about their energies and the energies of those around them. They suggest that others have “negative energy” and that they have “positive energy.” They believe that this is not just people reacting to the emotions of others but some kind of actual intangible energy field that humans have around them—an aura, if you will.

This belief has led to an industry of fraudsters who claim that they practice something called Reiki. A Reiki practitioner believes that he can bring out the energy of his own body and use it to influence the energy field of someone else to help that person for the better.

Some have even claimed that they can perform this allegedly amazing feat from a distance. These practitioners implement their energy-based healing from many miles away without ever meeting their “patients.”

Here’s the truth: While it is often put forth in scientific-sounding language, Reiki is utter gibberish that is meant to confuse those who don’t understand the words being used. Your body has no special energy field, and it doesn’t emit any magnetic force.^[3]

You have energy to perform tasks, but that does not create a specific energy field. It is just a measure of how much your body is able to accomplish in a given time. Whenever someone starts talking about the electromagnetism or heat emanating from your body and how they can use that to balance your energies, you know that you are talking to a fraudster or, at the very least, someone who is extremely delusional.

7 Halitosis Is A Made-Up Disease Imagined By Listerine To Sell More Product

Some of you may have heard of the condition known as halitosis (aka bad breath). Most people take this for granted as a serious problem these days and will often have various levels of social anxiety about having potential bad breath.

In fact, some individuals have worried enough to go to doctors about the issue. Many keep their Listerine handy and even some breath mints to avoid such an embarrassing problem. However, not long ago, people didn’t worry about bad breath. As it doesn’t cause pain or any life-threatening symptoms, they figured it couldn’t be considered a real disease. And they were right. It isn’t.

During its early days, the company that made Listerine, which has been around since the late 1800s, was selling a decent amount of product to sterilize wounds, especially in the mouth. But they felt that they were not selling enough. So they made up the term “halitosis”^[4] and started a marketing blitz to play on people’s insecurities.

It worked beautifully. People were so convinced by Listerine’s ploy that almost no one will be caught with bad breath anymore. Unfortunately for Listerine’s profits, a lot of people these days just carry some breath mints and brush their teeth regularly.

6 ‘Detoxing’ Your Body Is Not A Real Thing—It Is Pushed By People Trying To Sell Useless Products

In health aisles and on health blogs, you will often see detox supplements or detox diets meant to quickly flush all the toxins out of your body so that you are clean and ready to go.

These products and the people who push them sound very alarming about the buildup of bad things in your body and suggest that what you are drinking or eating to detox is nothing more than the precious elixir of life itself. And you can have as much as you need—for a price.

As you may have guessed, their statements are not true. Perhaps one day, laws will become stricter and these fraudsters will get what they deserve.

There are a few major problems with their claims. First, they don’t understand what “detox” means. A detox^[5] is used by medical professionals to get an addict to a point where he is safely off a drug. Addicts are often tapered off drugs so that the effects of quitting cold turkey don’t kill them, which can happen with some drugs.

It has absolutely nothing to do with cleaning out your insides. When discussing detox diets or supplements, the toxins to which people refer are totally nonspecific and don’t even exist. The truth is that your body constantly flushes anything poisonous out of you on its own. A good example of this is when your body slowly works the alcohol out of your system by using your liver.

More importantly, if you really think your body is not getting the toxins out and you are becoming severely ill, then you may have something serious like organ failure and you should see a doctor immediately. A detox drink will not save you.

5 Vaginal Douching Is Completely Unnecessary

Vaginal douching is fairly common among women but actually has a rather short history. It only started to see widespread use in the last couple of centuries. At first, it was meant almost entirely as a method of birth control. Often, this meant vinegar or even chemicals would be used, which could be quite dangerous.

Over time, the purpose moved away from birth control and became more about dealing with cleaning or odors. Lysol also heavily advertised in the early 1900s, suggesting that women should be using it to clean themselves. Although people eventually realized that it was a bad idea to apply Lysol to human skin, many women had become convinced that using products to clean their vaginas was something that should be done on a regular basis.

However, the truth is that vaginas are self-cleaning and do not need any special products. On top of that, douching could upset the careful chemical balance and lead to an increased risk of infections and other complications.

Doctors simply do not recommend doing this at all.^[6] But it is an uphill battle to convince people otherwise because so many women have been douching for generations and passing the habit on to their offspring.

4 Hucksters Are Playing Up The Dangers Of Fluoride And Trying To Sell People Special Water Filters

Fluoride is one of the most controversial substances on the planet. It was made famous in popular culture with movies like Dr. Strangelove. The main character wanted to launch a nuclear attack because he felt the communists were poisoning our precious bodily fluids with fluoride and he had to stop them.

Many people today feel similarly and think that fluoride is an incredibly dangerous substance that should never have been put anywhere near our drinking water. They cite bogus studies or reviews which claim that fluoride damages children’s growing brains, causes cancer, and more.

However, these alleged tests never hold up to scrutiny. The oft-cited research that claims neurological damage results from fluoride was simply a review of tests in China. We know that China has many different factors impacting the quality of their drinking water, not just fluoride.

Despite heavy testing all over the world, there is no evidence that fluoride is harmful.^[7] The worst it can do is create small, purely cosmetic white spots on your teeth if you have too much over time.

However, there are people who try to make a buck on fluoride fears and they will defend the claims of harm until the end. Some sites even charge exorbitant sums to sell people special water filters that supposedly remove all of that evil fluoride.

3 Depression Is A Very Real Disease, But The Majority Of Those Diagnosed Do Not Actually Fit The Bill

Depression and major depressive disorder are absolutely real. There is more than enough scientific evidence to prove it—we are not arguing that. The issue is that many of the individuals diagnosed with depression do not fit the criteria properly.

In a study at Johns Hopkins, they took a look at nearly 6,000 people who had previously been diagnosed with depression and found that less than 60 percent of them truly qualified as having major depressive disorder.^[8] Even worse, antidepressant use in the United States rose by 400 percent in about 20 years, with over 10 percent of the teenage-and-up population taking antidepressants of some kind.

Although depression does exist, many people are given drugs that could make them worse while not helping with their real issues. When someone who doesn’t qualify as having depression feels sad, it is likely because life is difficult. These people may need to talk with a counselor. But taking unneeded drugs could harm the chemical balance of their brains over time.

The reason for this is serotonin syndrome and the main way that depression is treated. Most antidepressants help you produce more serotonin, which is a feel-good chemical in your brain. Those with depression have trouble producing this.

However, if you have too much serotonin in your system over time or at once, it can actually damage your ability to properly produce it. Excessive serotonin can also cause seizures in extreme cases.

Although extreme reactions are only likely to happen if you overdose, taking antidepressants over time when you don’t need them cannot be good for your chemical balance. You are basically tipping the scales in the wrong direction.

2 Trypophobia Is Not An Official Disorder And Is Very Played Up By Peer Pressure

Recently, a ridiculous new condition known as trypophobia has arisen on the web. While no one seems to have found a way to profit from it yet, you can bet someone will try as soon as they figure out a way. If nothing else, some web administrators have received decent traffic from making a huge deal about this supposed condition.

Trypophobia is the alleged fear of clustered holes. Some people claim that these holes freak them out and make them feel a horrible sense of revulsion. Supposedly, their skin gets itchy or they feel panicky or nauseous when looking at clustered holes. However, there is little reason to believe that this is a real condition.

No professional psychologist or doctor of any kind recognizes this phobia or condition. The handful of studies that have been performed were on a small scale and hardly conclusive of anything solid.

Carol Mathews, a psychiatrist at the University of California, talked to NPR about the phenomenon. She believes that it isn’t a true fear but simply a combination of priming, disgust, and people’s good old “me too” social attitudes (aka peer pressure).^[9]

Trypophobia pictures are nearly always shown with images that most people would find disgusting whether the pictures had clustered holes or not. This primes the brain—along with being told that trypophobia is a thing—to feel disgust or revulsion when you look at other such images.

Mathews also pointed out that many of these pictures, such as those of sliced cantaloupes, might gross out any of us if we look at them too long. But that doesn’t mean we actually have a condition or an instinctual revulsion. Disgust is not the same thing as fear.

1 Showering On A Daily Basis Can Be Bad For Your Health—It Is More About Smell And Expectations

Showering daily, sometimes more than once a day, or at least once a week is a habit ingrained so deeply in so many individuals in modern societies that the idea of not doing it is utterly foreign. Many people just cannot imagine a life without regular showers or baths.

They spend a lot of money on shampoos and conditioners over the years. However, there is some reason to believe that the shampoo and conditioner companies are really selling you a big, fat load of social insecurity while happily taking your money to the bank.

There appears to be no scientific basis for believing that showering is good for your health in the slightest. In fact, all evidence, while not as strong as some would like, points to the contrary.

The research suggests that showers are actually bad for you because they constantly kill off healthy skin bacteria and mess with the delicate microbial balance that keeps you safe from diseases and other problems.^[10] Frequent bathing was not widespread until the more modern world emerged. Even then, the kinds of shampoos that we use now became common only recently.

In most people’s eyes, there was never any real need to shower so often until clever marketers convinced people that their natural odor was socially unacceptable. These marketers wanted to sell shampoos and other products like deodorant, so they created an industry that is now worth billions of dollars a year.

We aren’t saying that you should simply skip showers in today’s world. But showering with mostly water unless you really feel the need to remove a smell could at least cut down on how much you are harming your body’s balance of skin bacteria.

Desperate times call for desperate measures—what would you do to make some money if you really needed it? There are unusual paths to financial success, and some people get very creative. They see a unique gap in the market and take the opportunity to fill it. It’s a strange world, and things only get more interesting with each passing day. So why wouldn’t someone’s money-making scheme follow the trend? Here are the top 10 weirdest things people sell and actually make money on.

10 Virginity

Well, sex literally sells! Sex is a mostly taboo subject that initiates debates throughout the world. However, there is no doubt that virginity is a prize and something people hold in high regard across many communities. For men, getting to sleep with a virgin may be something of a conquest. For ladies, it may be a sacred act reserved only for the special person they choose.

But some women keep their virginity and then sell it to the highest bidder. With the amount that they get, they can set themselves up for a more comfortable life if they plan well. A night with a stranger may mean paying off student loans, opening an education fund, or a business downpayment. One lady actually sold her virginity for $3 million.    

9 Air

Air is free, found in nature, and just about everywhere, right? That isn’t always the case, depending on which part of the world you are in. Some parts are so polluted that some individuals would do just about anything to get to breathe in some fresh air. The cost isn’t such a big concern in these cases.

Air farming in fresh spaces is a solution to help those in polluted countries. Some enterprising people in the U.K. and Canada are cashing in by selling air, quite literally. For customers in China, air in a bottle is a prized possession and such a relief to their lungs, which are usually exposed to smog.

8 Toilet Paper

Answering the “call of nature” should not really be a luxurious experience. Or should it? Some may go to the bathroom just for some peace and quiet. They’ll stare at the wall or scroll on their phone while they do their business. But apparently, alone time isn’t the only priority when people go to the bathroom. Some people want to use nothing but the best, even when it comes to toiletries.

Some toilet paper manufacturers make luxury black, camouflaged, or Sudoku tissue paper to appeal to different markets. An example of the most expensive toilet paper is Toilet Paper Man’s 22 karat gold tissue, worth $1.3 million. There is a demand for this tissue in Dubai, and it is considered the perfect choice for golden toilet seats, which are more like thrones.

7 Human Waste

Although this may sound crazy, one man’s poop may be a life-saver for another. Some patients suffer from Clostridium difficile, a bacterial infection that is stubborn and fatal and responsible for 15,000 American deaths in a year. Doctors can treat this with a fecal transplant. Healthy microbes from the human waste of a healthy person are placed inside the intestines of the patient. This helps remove Clostridium difficile from their system. In 2015, one researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sold his stool and earned around $1,000.

But not anyone can qualify to be an OpenBiome stool donor. You need to pass a thorough clinical assessment and be free of any infections. You also cannot have traveled to a country in which there is a risk of contracting diseases. You cannot be obese and should not have used any antibiotics or illicit drugs within a specific time frame.

6 Professional Mourning Services

Funerals and burials are somber affairs, and the ones mostly affected by the loss are usually the deceased’s loved ones. However, some people are actually making money selling professional mourning services. They put up an act and cry on demand.

Professional mourners research the person who passed on so they can get to ‘know them’ and talk a bit about them as they mourn. Professional mourning services are common in African, Asian, and Hispanic countries. However, they are also gaining popularity across Europe and the U.S. Some are known to charge different rates for crying and doing other activities such as rolling on the ground, threatening to jump into the grave, and actually jumping into the grave.

5 Used Underwear

To some, handling or having someone’s underwear may be down-right disgusting. However, to others, this is a fetish, and they may be willing to pay a premium price to get ahold of someone else’s used underwear. Apparently, there is a considerable demand for the undergarment. The grosser they are, the bigger the demand.

This creepy business thrives on the sale of used women’s underwear. You get a better price if the underwear is tight-fitting, worn out, and has weird stains. Gross, right? A pair goes for around $50 bucks at a fair price. What makes it more bizarre is the vast market available for these products. Japan had vending machines just for this business. Of course, the government shut it down, but only on concerns that it was men that were wearing the female undergarments.

4 Breastmilk

Yes, mothers vend breastmilk at a reasonable price, and it’s a lucrative business that has existed for quite a while. While this may seem suitable for infants whose mothers can’t breastfeed, it still tops the list of strange things people sell for cash. The World Health Organization advocates that infants should get breastmilk from other healthy mothers in the event their biological mother is unable to produce milk. So, yes, you can make money selling your breast milk. There are sites like onlythebreast.com that facilitate this sale. Still, we can’t completely ignore the concerns about online breast milk customers.

Whether it’s for a full-grown adult with a fetish for human milk, we can’t tell. There are also medical concerns about the health of the lactating mother selling her milk.

3 Selling Real-Life Horror Moments

For most of us, we like to keep our dark moments to ourselves. We seldomly want to remember those times life dealt us a cruel hand. However, for others, this a money-making opportunity. People are actually getting paid to narrate and sell their real-life misery moments to magazines and newspapers. As the old cliché goes, “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

It may not work for everyone, but to some, it’s business as usual. These stories may range from your near-death experience, an illness, or even your spouse’s affair. The prices vary depending on the sensitivity of your story. It gets even creepier when the agencies require that you produce photographs or document proof to validate your story. Of course, they will publish these.

Even though it sounds callous, you can get between $200-$2,000 for a single story. If you are more aggressive with your bargaining skills, you can convince a magazine and a newspaper into a joint deal for your story.

2 Blood Plasma

Plasma is the clear fluid in which other blood components like platelets and red blood cells are suspended. This is why it is different from conventional blood donations. It takes much longer since the doctors have to extract the plasma from the blood. Apart from the fulfillment of knowing you’re helping a sick person somewhere, you also get paid well for it. To sell your plasma, you have to be screened for specific viruses, be 18 years old and weigh more than 110 lbs. If you are of the right weight and healthy, you can make two donations per week.

For each donation, hospitals pay anywhere from $20-$50. Hospitals pay you depending on the amount of plasma you can donate. The amount of plasma you can safely donate is directly proportional to your weight.

1 Selling Weird Jewelry on Etsy

Conventionally, jewelry is supposed to be beautiful and unique and probably shiny. However, there is an equally huge market for jewelry that is down-right weird and creepy. On Etsy, hundreds of sellers make creepy jewelry out of unconventional material like deer teeth.

Even more astounding is the market for such jewelry. You’ll see soap in the shape of mutilated human body parts and denture-inspired earrings and finger rings on the site. Now with the advances and capabilities of 3D printing, the array of weird stuff on Etsy just got bigger. Sellers get quite an impressive passive income selling bizarre jewelry.

The Internet has become the world’s garage sale which I guess would make it a world sale. And if you’ve ever stopped to meander through a garage sale, you’ll see plenty of strangeness. We’ve already had a list about oddities on eBay auctions but we’re going to open it up to all Internet marketplaces. One note: it is not possible to ascertain the seriousness of these offers. It’s quite feasible the seller had his or her tongue firmly planted in their cheek. You decide.

10 Sperm Whale Carcass

In May of 2014, and unwelcome tourist arrived on a Newfoundland beach near Cape St. George: a 40-ft (12 m) dead sperm whale. Told they were responsible for disposing of the carcass, the city of Cape St. George looked for a way to pay for it. They first explored renting a 50-ft (15 m) boat to tow the carcass back out to sea, but that did not prove powerful enough. And, after a week of wallowing in the surf, the dead mammal was starting to reek. Desperate, Mayor Peter Fenwick turned to eBay.

Fenwick says they weren’t trying to profit from the dead whale, merely to find someone to take it off their shores. The bidding for the carcass was up to $2,000 when eBay pulled the auction because of its policy against selling animals, dead or alive. Environment Canada also informed Fenwick that it was against Canadian law to sell a member of an endangered species, even if it’s dead. In the end, fortune smiled as a high tide, large swells and a westerly wind sent the carcass back out to sea, solving the problem.

9 A Human Soul

While the father of lies might give you a good deal on a used soul, you can’t sell it on eBay. They have a specific policy against it. When asked why, they responded: “If the soul does not exist, eBay could not allow the auctioning of the soul because there would be nothing to sell. However, if the soul does exist then, in accordance with eBay’s policy on human parts and remains, we would not allow the auctioning of human souls.”

Turns out there’s a reason eBay has a policy: people have been trying to sell their souls for quite a while. Back in 2008, a member of the band Paradigm tried to auction his soul for 25,000.50 pounds (about $37,500 in 2008—why the extra half pound only he knows). But wait! There’s more! He also would send updates on his soul, along with a cut of his and his bands earnings. But wait! There’s more! He would also send the buyer a birthday card every year. And he had a clause where he could buy his soul back for 100,000,000 pounds ($150,000,000).

8 Poop

Sold on marketplaces and by online businesses, selling poop has recently found a niche, although there is an argument that mailing crap has been going on for decades. Mailpoop.com provides a gag gift for that special someone: a nice box of dog poop. Pricing depends on the size of the dog providing the poop. For instance, a 110 pound (50 kg) dog will provide 2 pounds (1 kg) of smelly joy for a very affordable price of $20. Their website even has a photo gallery of their dogs taking dumps.

But for the more discerning shopper, there is Shitexpress.com that will send a sealed plastic container of horse, gorilla or elephant poop. Typically this item is not meant to bring a smile to the recipient’s face, as it comes with an anonymous note from someone he or she irritated. Some of the message options include “One steaming pile from me to you” and “I hate your guts.” Another note on the side tries to give the recipient perspective: “At first think about yourself. It [the poop] was sent to you probably because you hurt or insulted someone. Take a deep breath. Nothing bad happened. You should try to be a better person from now on.”

7 Belly Button Lint

Avid garage sale spelunkers will tell you they often come across sale items they had no idea anyone would want, much less sell. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure (or so the saying goes). My personal saying is similar: one person’s trash is still another person’s trash. eBay has plenty of these items, things like toilet paper rolls and empty egg cartons and makeup containers for the arts-and-crafts-minded. But at least these items are being repurposed, keeping them out of landfills.

But then you come across the ad for 72 Taco Bell mild sauce packets for $18 (They are aware these packets are free, right?). Or the iPhone 7 that looks like it spent quality time in a garbage disposal with the caption: “Works great and turns on. Just needs the screen repaired.” Asking price: $500. Another seller advertised their rusted “portable fire pit” for $100. The portable part comes from a caster-wheeled chair base that had been attached to the pit. Another wanted to sell a “rare” peanut with four nuts inside for the excellent price of $500.

The winner of the most bizarre, however, goes to the Baltimore man who posted on a MOPAR website for Chrysler-built enthusiasts his interest to trade his belly button lint for a muscle car, motorcycle, rifles, gold coins or simply cash. He had the navel nap in multi-colors, in sealed plastic containers with the begin and end dates of when he collected the um- samples. He had to add that he wanted only serious offers (yeah right) and warned against low balling.

6 Single-use Plastic Bag

Some people sell items that are no longer normally available. These include discontinued things like VHS tapes or items that evoke nostalgia like a Care Bear keychain or a Ross Perot campaign button. Some, however, jump the gun a bit in their hopes for nostalgia. For instance, one seller believed pencils were already archaic, advertising a “2019” model for $49. It didn’t even have an eraser. Another seller posted an image of two snowballs in their freezer, advertising that they were from the blizzard of January 2016, the “biggest snowfall in NYC history.” Asking price was $10,000, plus $2,000 for shipping. It doesn’t mention how the snowballs could be authenticated.

One creative Aussie thought they’d bank on people’s nostalgia even after only a single year. They posted an image of a plastic bag in a picture frame with the caption “We banned single use plastic bags this time last year” and titled it “The Last Plastic Bag.” Asking price was $250. It might take a couple millennia before anyone is truly nostalgic for those. Come back to us then.

5 Harambe-Shaped Flamin’ Hot Cheeto

The phenomenon of seeing faces in our mashed potatoes or cow-shapes in the clouds is a perfectly normal cognizant tendency to see the familiar in chaotic inanimate forms. It’s called pareidolia and it’s a mental short hand to make sense of what we see. Spending grotesque sums of money to purchase worthless inanimate objects because of this phenomena, however, falls a little south of normal. The oft-cited example of this is the cheese sandwich Diane Duyser made in 1994. As she was taking a bite, she looked on her beloved sammie to see the Virgin Mary staring back. She was so surprised, she put the sandwich in a plastic case with cotton balls and placed it on her nightstand where it sat for 10 years, growing nary a single spore of mold. In 2004, Duyser decided to share her miraculous sammie with the world, selling it on eBay for $28,000.

But that’s just the tip of the proverbial food pyramid. When a Texas man purchased a cornflake shaped like the state of Illinois for $1,350 in 2008, he decided to send someone to Virginia to retrieve it. It seems that when he purchased another cornflake billed as world’s largest, he had it mailed to him and it arrived in three pieces. Another cornflake—this one shaped like Australia—reportedly sold for over $200.

Jesus often appears on food and when his face appeared on a pierogi while the seller was cooking it on Easter in 2005, it was for $1,775. Jesus has made an appearance on everything from a banana peel to a sour cream and onion potato chip to a burnt fish stick to a pizza crust to the inevitable grilled cheese sandwich. Jesus has even appeared on a Cheeto both on a cross and walking.

The irregular shapes of salty snacks have inspired plenty of online bidding. The asking price of a Cheeto shaped like a flying Superman was $5,000. A Dorito shaped like a pope’s mitre went for $1,209 in 2005. And in 2017, a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto shaped like the famous gorilla, Harambe, sold for nearly $100,000. Just the year before, the Cincinnati Zoo had been forced to kill Harambe when a 3-year-old fell into his enclosure.

4 Country Jacuzzi Hot Tub

Instead of merchandise, some sell services online. For instance, for people tired of their parents nagging them about finding a mate, or weary of friends trying to set them up with hideous blind dates, or just want to be seen as taken without the baggage of being taken, there’s the Invisible Boyfriend or Invisible Girlfriend. The user fills out a questionnaire to form their ideal boyfriend or girlfriend’s personality, chooses a selfie from the company’s collection of fake faces to download on their phone, and selects a “how we met” narrative from their collection. The user will then get text messages from their invisible lover. For an extra fee, their lover will also send gifts or flowers on holidays, birthdays and Valentines Day. The user, however, cannot expect any sexting.

There are companies that will provide fake job references or valid alibis for when you call in sick or want to cheat on your significant other. You can hire professional wedding guests to fill out the church, paparazzi to help you feel like a celebrity, and even rent a wife to test drive a marriage before you find a real one. No, we are not talking about sexual favors, just a woman willing to cook your dinners, pick up your clothes and wash them. Apparently you’d be test driving a marriage from the 50’s.

But not all services are equal and the Internet is chock full of unequal services. One person posted that he/she decorates cakes and apparently received some unfavorable comments about their work. The seller wrote: “Seen [seeing?] as all the bad comments I got on my cake post yesterday[,] I was up all night decorating this[.] Can see a massive improvement[.] So thanks to all the constructive criticism[.] You just made me 10x better.” The photo that accompanies this post is of a cake, topped by a ragged, egg-shaped window with what looks like Joan Rivers with wings or Tinker Bell – if she was Joan Rivers’ doppelganger – grimacing from it. He/she was so proud of their work, they posted new (presumably inflated) prices.

One vendor offered to build a “country Jacuzzi hot tub” for $9,500. Essentially the seller would cut a steel ¾ inch oblong water or natural gas tank in half, mount a 4-person seat on the side, an air tank and tube for a bubbler and set it all over a trench campfire. The seller promises the water will heat up in only 2 hours and will stay warm until morning. Of course, a new, top-rated, Jacuzzi with adjustable jet massage, comfortable ergonomic seats, and a heater that admittedly takes 3-4 hours to heat will set a buyer back about $3,000 less.

3 Whiff of Brangelina

In the 1987 film Spaceballs, Mel Brooks’ character, President Skroob, popped open a can of “Perri-air” in order to huff clean air instead of his planet’s pollution. Co-writer, director and producer Brooks had no idea how prophetic this was. Today, clean air is big business, especially to those living in heavily polluted countries such as China and India. Vitality Air makes $300,000 annually bottling 8 liters of mountain air from Alberta, Canada, and selling the containers for $32. This is slightly discounted from the Ziploc bag of Alberta air that launched the company when the owners sold it on eBay for $169 in 2014. We can also purchase jars of British air for $113. In 2015, a Ziploc bag of air from the “hippest neighborhood in the world” in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, sold on eBay for $20,100.

Celebrity air can go for even more outrageous amounts. In 2015, a Ziploc bag of air supposedly from a Kanye West concert during his Yeezus Tour went on eBay with an initial asking price of $5. After 90 bids, the price ballooned to $60,100. Seizing on the opportunity, 20 bags of alleged Kanye concert air went up for auction, one of the listings claiming: “Air taken from FRONT ROW SEATS; POSSIBLY CONTAINS KANYE’S BREATH!!!” When she heard about it, Kanye’s then wife, Kim Kardashian tweeted “Wow, he can sell anything!”

One power couple that would rival Kim and Kanye and are also in the midst of a divorce is Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Back in 2010 when they were still dating, a jar went up for auction on eBay that was reportedly filled with Brad and Angelina’s exhalation as they walked by the jar during a red carpet event. There is no indication Brangelina exhaled in the jar, that the jar was even near enough to the couple to capture their breath, or any proof the jar was even at the red carpet event. And yet some poor soul purchased the jar for $523.

2 Crypts Near Marilyn Monroe’s

Bizarre obsessions over celebrity personal items are not new. When the Beatles invaded the states back in 1964, everything from ashtrays, bath mats, silverware and used cakes of soap were taken from their hotels and sold as souvenirs. When they swam in a pool in Miami, water from the pool was bottled and sold as “Beatle Water.” Even the sheets they slept on were cut up into 7,200 squares, each mounted on certificates of authenticity that helpfully indicated which Beatle slept on it and from what part of the bed the swatch came from. Several sets of the Fab Four swatches recently went on eBay, selling for $150 per foursome.

More recent examples of this phenomena are Scarlett Johansson’s used tissue (sold for $5,300), Justin Timberlake’s uneaten French toast ($3,154), Lady Gaga’s fake fingernail ($13,000), and William Shatner’s kidney stone ($25,000). Quite a bit of personal items of Britney Spears has been auctioned including a used wad of chewing gum ($14,000), half-eaten egg salad sandwich ($520), and a pregnancy test pilfered from her hotel bathroom ($5,000).

Marilyn Monroe is another celebrity who suffered from intrusions into her personal life while she lived, and, sadly, long after her death. In 2010, three x-rays of her chest taken when she entered Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Florida in November of 1954 were auctioned. The frontal chest x-ray (in medical jargon known as a posterior-anterior view) went for $25,000 while the two profile images (lateral views) went for $10,000 apiece.

When she died in 1962, she was buried in a mausoleum at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery, in a crypt apparently purchased during her less-than-a-year marriage to baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio. During their 1954 divorce, DiMaggio sold his crypt directly above Monroe’s to entrepreneur Richard Poncher. When Poncher died in 1986, he had an odd last request: he wanted to be buried in his casket face-down, allegedly so he could gaze upon Monroe throughout eternity. According to his widow, Elsie, his wishes were honored and, after his funeral, he was turned over onto his belly.

Twenty-three years later Elsie wanted to pay-off her $1.6 million mortgage on her Beverly Hills home and decided to move her husband’s remains and auction his crypt with the starting bid at $500,000. The three-day bidding sent the price to a record $4.6 million. Unfortunately, the bidder welched and Elsie turned to the 11 others who made bids greater than $4.5 million. All 11 also backed out.

After hearing about Elsie’s auction, another widow put a crypt near Monroe’s up for auction with a starting bid of $250,000. She didn’t get a single bid. And Richard Poncher’s body is still above Monroe’s. As a side note, Hugh Hefner purchased the crypt next to Monroe’s for $75,000. Monroe fans were outraged when Hefner was buried by her side in 2017, largely because Hefner had used her 1948 nude photo without her permission to launch his magazine, Playboy, in 1953. Not only did Hefner not get her permission, he never paid her for the use of the photo, nor did he apologize for nearly ruining her career.

1 Grandma’s “Denchers”

Online marketplaces have often been the battleground for stormy relationships. Way back in 2008, an unidentified woman made an unpleasant discovery on her bed when she came home one day: a condom wrapper that belonged to her husband and panties (or, as she described it, a “tarts’ knickers”) that did not belong to her. She tried to auction both on E-Bay, but they have a strict policy against selling used intimates. So she auctioned a photo of them, commenting that the condom wrapper was for a “size small.” But she wasn’t done. She next planned to sell his Harley Davidson for 99 cents. Similarly, a shock jock’s wife who, enraged at his on-air flirting, sold his $45,000 Lotus Esprit Turbo for 77 cents in 2013.

Clearly some ads are meant to be cathartic, a balm for the pain. One Oklahoma City woman advertised her husband’s riding lawnmower for $500. But she couldn’t help throwing in some zingers. “It’s got less miles than his girlfriend. Barely used unlike his cheap girlfriend….It’s a lawn tractor. Not sure what that means[;] the only plowing he did was on her.” Another ad offered a free $1600 couch and loveseat set that was only a month old. In the photos, there are clearly several rips and holes in the upholstery. “So me and my husband got in a fight,” the seller wrote. “I moved my stuff into [a] storage unit and I came over because I still had the key[.] Found that he bought new couches[.] I murdered them[.] All of them,” she said, admitting she “stabbed the couches.” She continues: “We made up and [I] moved back in” and added “nahhhhhhh hahahaha.”

In 2016, a British woman ran off with another man, taking her husband’ s vehicle and leaving her own 2004 Smart Roadster behind. The Roadster was a smack in her husband’s face, because he thought it an “absolute disgrace of a car” fit only for a “person with little or no dignity.” He sold it and her personal possessions on eBay, saying he’d use the proceeds to get drunk and purchase the services of a prostitute.

In 2020, a woman was scrolling through a used fashion marketplace and stopped at a T-shirt she liked, modeled by a woman in a bedroom. Imagine her shock when she realized the bedroom belonged to her boyfriend. She contacted the seller and verified it was indeed her boyfriend’s boudoir. When confronted, the seller was apologetic, then had the gall to ask the girlfriend if she was still interested in the shirt.

One grandma allegedly had the habit of borrowing money from her grandchild to purchase things, but failed to repay him or her. So the grandchild posted on Facebook’s marketplace grandma’s “denchers” for $100, noting they were “very clean, like new.”

Tobacco companies get a bad rap, presumably because they make profits by giving people all sorts of cancer. This article probably isn’t going to help their case, since we’re talking about nothing but the horrible depths they’ve sunk to keep cancer profitable, but it sure is interesting.

10. Free Cigarettes For Soldiers

Smoking and the military have such a close relationship, the subject has its own Wikipedia page. Soldiers love themselves some tobacco-based produce. But have you ever wondered why? Well, it may have something to do with the fact that tobacco companies long ago realized that the military represented a huge potential market, full of highly-stressed individuals with many hours of downtime.

Realizing this, some tobacco companies lobbied to have cigarettes made a standard part of a soldier’s rations, which said tobacco companies gladly provided for free. Though this may seem nice on the surface, the move was an incredibly shrewd one since, although they did give away a lot of their stock for free, they ensured that soldiers would be hooked and buying their brand, long after they left the military.

9. Suppressing The World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is kind of a big deal when it comes to matters of world health. Obviously. The WHO is incredibly powerful and respected, and able to affect change on an almost-global scale.

And tobacco companies couldn’t care less about any of that jazz. In secret documents leaked to the WHO, it was revealed that several massive tobacco companies have been undermining the efforts of the WHO for years. The range and scope of the tactics used is pretty staggering, but in a nutshell, tobacco companies threw money at things that threatened their profits until they went away. The things they wanted to go away, by the by, were the people trying to cure cancer, which makes them the exact opposite of Bill Gates.

8. Trying To Take Down China

It’s a pretty safe assumption that China will eventually run the world; sorry, Beyonce. However, standing up to the ever-present Chinese menace is a lone hero: big tobacco companies. As reported by Reuters, tobacco companies in China have deliberately resisted raising their prices, and even infiltrated anti-smoking groups, to ensure that Chinese citizens remain hooked and in turn get all of the cancer.

If that’s not evil enough for you, they’ve also refused to put health warning on their packs. Then again, if people don’t realize that the things that taste like kissing an old person’s couch are bad for you, they probably don’t know how to read anyway. Thanks for giving us a fighting chance, tobacco!

7. Paying Scientists To Play Down The Link Between Smoking And Alzheimer’s

The list of diseases and physical maladies that smoking helps cause is so long, the physical exertion of writing them all down would give us early-onset arthritis, and who wants that? Suffice to say, it’s real real long.

However, one disease that has constantly emerged in the papers is Alzheimer’s. And yet, every now and again, a paper would emerge that suggested that smoking was somehow beneficial to people suffering from the condition. When someone actually investigated this claim, they found that every single person or scientist that had made such a claim had undisclosed links to the tobacco industry. Because of course they did.

6. Making Smoking Fashionable

Smoking is cool and everyone knows it, because there’s nothing cooler than having erectile dysfunction and smelly eyebrows. Back in the heyday of smoking, Lucky Strike Cigarettes noticed that sales of their brand were lagging. So they hired one Edward Bernays to help them. Bernays noticed that Lucky Strike’s packaging was an incredibly garish green color. Realizing that people are largely idiots, he concluded that the ugly color was the reason people weren’t smoking Luckies. When Lucky Strike refused to change their packaging, Bernays decided that he’d simply make green fashionable.

Which he did, by throwing a green-themed ball. When all the biggest movers and shakers of the day were pictured wearing green, sales of Lucky Strike brand cigarettes shot up, simply because green was now awesome, because pretty people were dressed in green one night. Again, people are idiots.

5. Trying To Defraud The Government Of A Billion Dollars

Though smoking arguably causes the government untold billions in healthcare costs, it also makes it a fair chunk of change in taxes, which pay for things like roads, hospitals and policemen. Then again, it also probably pays for the things that cure all the people dying of cancer because of smoking, but we should probably digress before our heads begin to hurt.

Over in Canada, a former tobacco executive, Stan Smith, was caught red-handed conspiring to smuggle millions of cigarettes, the estimated tax on which would have been in excess of a billion dollars. Don’t worry though, because Mr Smith definitely got his just deserts, by which we mean he sold out all of his co-workers, and got off scot-free. Justice!

4. Targeting Children, Then Denying It

The argument about whether tobacco companies target children has always been hotly contested, by which we mean tobacco companies have been shady as hell about it, while hiding behind a constant shield of highly-paid lawyers.

For example, it was constantly argued that Joe Camel (a spokescamel for Camel Cigarettes) was aimed at children. Though Camel Cigarettes naturally denied the claim, critics countered with the fact that Mr. Camel was equally as recognizable to children as Mickey Mouse, and that he rode a skateboard. Camel responded by telling the critics to shut the hell up. Because that’s how you win an argument.

3. Convincing Women To Smoke, For Feminism

Back in the early days of smoking, the market was almost entirely limited to men. However, this wasn’t an ideal situation for tobacco companies, as their potential consumer base was effectively cut in half. They needed a hero, they needed a cowboy. They needed Edward Bernays. Again.

Bernays quickly got on the case, by leaking a story to the press that, during a parade, some women would be lighting “torches of freedom,” to pave the way for female equality. What he didn’t tell them was that said women were stooges, paid by a tobacco company to smoke in public. When the images of said women hit the papers, millions of women were exposed to the message that, in order for them to be equal to men, they had to smoke. So they did, because advertising totally works, if you’re willing to sell your soul to Satan.

2. Supporting Human Rights Abuse

With all the damage and death that smoking causes, how they’re made is oftentimes ignored. However, one human rights group decided to look into how British American Tobacco’s cigarettes were made, and found that they directly profited the brutal military dictatorship in Burma.

BAT countered the claims, by stating that their factory represented valuable jobs to the Burmese people, to which human rights groups responded by saying that BAT were only paying said workers 17 pence (25 cents) a day, or a third of what other comparable jobs in the area were paying. BAT quickly bowed out, and withdrew from the country.

1. Refusing To Inform People About How Dangerous Smoking Is

Nowadays, it’s virtually a universally-accepted fact that smoking is bad for your health. However, saying your product kills people isn’t a savvy business move, which is why a number of tobacco companies simply downplayed the hell out of, or outright lied about, exactly how dangerous their products were.

For example, they massively downplayed the dangers of “low-tar” cigarettes, advertising them as less dangerous than their full-tar (read: manly) cigarettes. Turns out, this was a complete and utter lie; saying low-tar cigarettes are less dangerous than full-tar ones, is like saying a shotgun blast to the chest is less harmful than one to the face.

When the government demanded that such companies issue full and frank public apologies at their own expense, Big Tobacco fought the decision so hard, that the first time you probably heard about it was right now, when we mentioned it in this article.