Kyle McDonald. BBC Russian Service - Information Services

Another incredible story, showing the limitless possibilities of the Internet, happened in Canada. After Alex Tew, who famously made a million dollars selling pixels on his homepage, Canadian Kyle MacDonald has become the head of the news. A year ago, a twenty-six-year-old man set out to exchange a paper clip for a house, and, imagine, he succeeded. Kyle based his enterprise on the children's game "Bigger and Better" (More and Better), when an item is exchanged for something more valuable. Kyle traded a paper clip for a fish-shaped wooden pen after finding a person on the Internet who agreed to do it. The enterprising Canadian gave the handle to the sculptor, receiving in return a handmade ceramic doorknob. He traded that handle for a camping stove, and the stove for a portable power generator. At this stage, Kyle realized that his dream of living in his own house could become a reality and, by his own admission, began to devote much more time to finding options for an exchange than he had previously spent.

The generator was traded for a neon beer advertisement and a keg to boot. The Canadian exchanged all this stuff for snowmobiles, snowmobiles for a ticket to a ski resort. The ticket was successfully traded for a van, which, in turn, for an audio recording contract, and a contract for living in an apartment in the city of Phoenix for a year. Then Kyle found a man who was willing to give up the right to spend an afternoon with Ellis Cooper. Finally, the Canadian traded the latter for a snow globe, a ball inside which some kind of action takes place, for example, snowflakes fall, deer ride, etc. But the balloon that Kyle received was not an ordinary one - there were figures of the members of the KISS group inside. It would seem, who needs this trinket and how does it bring Kyle closer to his dream? It turned out that in the most direct way. As it turned out, Hollywood producer Corbin Bernsen is an avid balloon collector and that he already has 6500 pieces in his collection, but there is no such thing. He was willing to do anything to get this rare piece and agreed to trade it for a role in his new film Donna on Demand, which begins filming in September. The denouement of the story was not long in coming: the mayor of the city, Kipling, agreed to exchange the right to act in the film for a house in the city. He plans to use the received role of measures for the promotion of the town. So in less than a year, according to this incredible story, a Canadian guy traded a paperclip for a house using the Internet. He plans to move in next month. Thematic materials in the articles: -

Julia Topolnitskaya

Everything is possible in this world. You can get rid of even the most useless thing, so much so that you get something very valuable in return. For example, an apartment.

Yulia Topolnitskaya (26) together with Sergey Matvienko (34) ("Improvisation") set out to achieve this goal. They decided to exchange a simple paper clip for an apartment in Moscow. And they seem to be doing great. The first who wanted to change was a girl from Novomoskovsk. She gave the actors a camera in exchange for a paper clip, which they then successfully exchanged for a moped. Further more!

Yulia Topolnitskaya and Sergey Matvienko

The same moped Julia and Sergey soon also changed, now for a certificate for breast augmentation. A man from St. Petersburg took his future breast for himself (more precisely, for his wife), giving the stars his rare GAZ 69 of 1961. Well, in the end: yesterday Topolnitskaya and Matvienko exchanged the car for a Ulysse Nardin watch for half a million rubles. Not bad!

By the way, Julia immediately hurried to assure that everything was fair in the exchange. “We don’t deceive anyone, we just give people what they need, and they give us what they don’t need)) each of you can help our dream come true, just tell your friends about us))),” the actress wrote. on your Instagram.

Hooray!! After 7 months, we finally exchanged our Gaz 61, 61g.v.!!! It was taken from us by the owners of the "warrior" @warriorfightclub from St. Petersburg. Now we have a fucking cool Ulysse Nardin watch, worth HALF A MILLION RUBLES!!! And we are waiting for your exchange offers again! For those who are not in the know, I have specially attached a second video in which I talk about all our exchanges, scroll through. @sergeymatvienko and I decided to do the impossible - to exchange an ordinary paper clip for an apartment in Moscow! Through a series of exchanges, we have already reached the amount of 500,000₽ !! We don’t deceive anyone, we just give people what they need, and they give us what they don’t need)) each of you can help our dream come true, just tell your friends about us))) #exchange #apartment in Moscow #watch #ulyssenardin #fight club #warrior #sergeimatvienko #yuliatopolnitskaya

Kyle MacDonald was born on October 3, 1979 in Burnaby, Canada. Grew up in Belcarra. Graduated in Geography from the University of British Columbia. He is known for his non-trivial projects: he delivered about 1,000 pizzas all over Australia on a scooter, once planted 100,000 trees himself, sent several hundred postcards to the Galapagos Islands, etc. The most famous project is the exchange of an ordinary red paper clip for a house. He entered the Guinness Book of Records as the person who made the most successful transaction on the Internet. He is currently involved in several Internet projects, including whoaretheseguys.com and ledhulahoops.com.

How to buy a house if you don't even have a job? One day a resourceful Canadian Kyle MacDonald it dawned on him: he remembered how in childhood he enjoyed playing one game: "Let's swing without looking." Its meaning was to exchange one trinket for another, each time trying to get a bigger and better thing. Kyle thought: why not trade the house in this way? And then his eyes fell on the red paper clip that connected the pages of his resume, ready to go to potential employers. At first, this idea seemed crazy to the guy, but then the thought flashed: “Why not?” ... The little red paper clip was destined to be the beginning of a grand adventure that the whole world is talking about.

I'm 29 years old, says Kyle. - I am a writer. In the summer of 2007, my book One Red Paperclip: How a Small Stationery Turned into a Big Adventure came out. It has 295 pages. A kind of story of a red paper clip and its transformation into a house. The book is selling well, translated into 12 languages, it seems that a Russian edition is being prepared or has already been published.

All this speaks, probably, about success, fame. Yes, indeed, I am quite famous, because my experience, which is described in my only book so far, is widely known. True, at times I also write short stories that have nothing to do with the exchange that took place. Perhaps in time I will be more popular thanks to them. Who knows…

The story of the Canadian MacDonald is very reminiscent of the Russian fairy tale about the lucky slacker. Without leaving the spot and doing practically nothing, in just a year he turned an ordinary paper clip into a house. No magic or deceit - he just used the Internet. And not so much went to achieve his goal, how many indulged. Worked in amateur marketing.

Tell us how did you do it all?

Three years ago, I, the man who had a red paper clip, decided to trade it for something bigger, prettier, better. And the process started. At first, I even managed to stay in the same product segment. But then everything changed, and these giant scissors formed between the paper clip and the house, which lead everyone to such amazement. Although I always ask you to remember that exchanges would

Lo only 14.

The transaction scheme looked quite simple: a blog on oneredpaperclip.com, an announcement about the exchange - and now, instead of a paper clip, Kyle already has a ballpoint pen (time). And then he took his excitement ... Kyle exchanged the handle for a doorknob (two). A doorknob for a camp stove (three), a stove for an electric generator that was confiscated by New York firefighters but then returned (four), after which McDonald exchanged it for a beer barrel with a Budweiser neon sign (five). This barrel attracted Canadian DJ Michael Barret, and he traded a snowmobile for it (six). (Perhaps it was because McDonald marketed the barrel on the Internet as a DIY party kit.) (eight). Meanwhile, Kyle's activities were followed closely by the public both on his blog and in the barter section of craigslist.org, offering advice and leaving admiring comments: "Wow, the paperclip owner became the owner of the van!"

But the exchange has not yet been completed. A weirdo showed up who liked Kyle's van so much that he offered McDonald a record deal in return (nine). Looks like this guy was a joker and a cynic. He knew that a minibus was a useful thing to drive, but what a fool who can't sing would do with the Aspiring Star Kit (30 hours of recording in the studio; 50 hours of mixing; transport to the Canadian city of Toronto from anywhere in the world and back; living in Toronto, as well as giving the recorded album to people from Sony-BMG and XM radio)? McDonald was vain but not stupid enough to make himself look ridiculous in front of the pros at Sony-BMG and posted another trade ad. A certain young American singer, who looks like she will never be known, traded her celebrity contract for a year's residence in her Arizona home - great news (ten)!

McDonald traded a year for a day, or rather, an evening, with rock star Alice Cooper (eleven). McDonald gave Cooper to someone for a shiny disco ball (twelve), and handed the ball to American soap opera star Corbin Bernsen, who collected such balls. Bernsen, an old-fashioned man, did to MacDonald the way aging filmmakers do to their young mistresses (and lovers) - he offered him a role (quite, by the way, paid) in his new film (thirteen). And although there was no love between the actor and Kyle, this step is fully explained by the fact that Bernsen began to fall into childhood with his shiny balls, and the child’s gratitude for the toy is quite commensurate with gratitude for affection, if not exceeds it. It was then that MacDonald felt that he was caught: even with the most virtuoso exchange, it would be quite difficult to foist some other "young actor" on Bernsen.

instead of yourself. And he began to scatter his brains about what to do with this suddenly begun film career of his next. The idea came to the administration of the Canadian city of Kipling, about which it was known only that there was such an English writer, the author of The Jungle Book and the poem "If". The city administration decided to drive into eternity on MacDonald's film popularity, for which they offered him not the old-fashioned title of "honorary citizen of Kipling" (this could be afforded, for example, by Paris, Rome or Berlin), but much more material

new benefit - a house. A real two-story house. White with red windows. Now Kyle MacDonald is, in his own words, preparing to move to tiny (pop. 1,140) Kipling. Fourteen!

Have you owned your own home before?

I lived in Montreal, rented an apartment with my girlfriend. Now I also live in Montreal and rent an apartment with my girlfriend. It's the same girl, and we even got married in the summer, but not the same apartment.

None of your exchanges can be called equivalent, they have always been on

promotion. Have you encountered only impenetrable dullards?

I certainly think that people are basically stupid. But I believe that this is not the reason for my success. The people I dealt with were, at least in the course of the exchanges, children rather than businessmen. They wanted to play, and in the exchange there is always an element of the game. In childhood, we all exchanged toys, and it never occurred to us to evaluate which one is more expensive or which one is larger. Like it - that's all. That's what the criterion was. The same here. Someone liked the paper clip, someone liked the generator, someone else liked something else. I did not go as a traveling salesman, offering my goods. I offered only one thing and wanted to get another for it. Not any other, but the one that I like.

So you had a specific goal? This doesn't go well with childishness...

Well, you see, everyone grows up sooner or later. So I grew up at the end of 2005. After the third or, it seems, even the fourth exchange, I thought: if everything is going so well, why not aim for more, implement a seemingly crazy idea, turn a paper clip into a house? And then I felt excited.

By the way, excitement is also quite a childish state. And, as you can see, quite productive: I still managed to achieve my goal. I think that a large number of people understood that the main mechanism that led to success was the combination of perseverance, patience and intelligence.

You said your book is selling well. Do you have a lot of imitators or are they just curious?

Most are just curious. If you read the memoirs of Napoleon, this does not mean that you will rush to imitate him. But any striking example attracts attention.

How do you use the internet? In whichpurposes?

I check my mail, I go to news sites that interest me. As a rule, there is nothing unusual about them, it's like looking out the window every morning when you wake up.

You owe so much to the Internet and talk about it so simply - like a window?

If there was no Internet, but I could somehow change the paper clip for a house, I would still become a star, I would be interviewed, etc.

After all, the mechanisms of popularity have remained the same, they have not changed at all. The Internet has simply accelerated everything. And literally everything. You will be forgotten about today many times faster than it would have happened a hundred years ago, because there is so much news on the Web and they arrive at such a speed that Andy Warhol's dream of everyone's right to 15 minutes of fame is close to being realized.

But I'm not going to give up so easily. I will expand my popularity, I have conceived a big project whoaretheseguys.com for this. In addition, I have a home page where I post my stories and other prose experiences. Ultimately, I understand that the red paper clip made me a media person, but I want to be remembered not only with this paper clip.

It turns out that you invariably associate all your activities with the Internet.space?

Let's put it this way: this is my arsenal, a useful toolkit, a way to implement ideas. But I'm not immersed in the Web with my head, I'm quite happy with my real life, although I can understand people who find virtual reality much more interesting.

Why not?

Do you consider yourself a simple guy or some kind of outstanding superhero?

So what kind of superhero am I? Superheroes are the product of entire empires, the media, they invest a lot of money, they have such stunning PR, they are recognized on the street. And I'm a simple guy who came to everything on his own.

What if others want to? Was there a desire to put your success on stream,create something like an Internet resource where users could repeatyour experience and exchange all for all?